After finishing the regular season in third, Sunnybank couldn’t match eventual premiers UQ in last year’s preliminary final, bringing the Dragons season to an end one week earlier than they would have liked.

Head coach Damon Virtue has been busy over summer and has added some new faces to a more mature Sunnybank squad, who appear ready to become a Premier Rugby heavyweight.

Overview with Damon Virtue: 

“The preseason has been really good so far, everything has been positive and the boys have trained really hard. I think our conditioning is in a really good place, we’ve worked hard at that and our trial form has been solid,” Virtue said.

“We’ve played UQ, Jeeps and Brothers so far. Obviously it’s hard to get a real gauge because a lot of players are in and out during trials but I think we’ve gone well against all of them, particularly against Brothers and Jeeps in the last two weeks. UQ were really good but I think we held our own so that’s positive because they are a benchmark side.

“Looking back at last year, it was a missed opportunity in a lot of ways. We got to the back end of the season and gave ourselves a chance but UQ were just too good on the day in that semi final. We obviously wanted to progress into the grand final but we probably weren’t good enough with our game management and just didn’t look after the footy. That’s something we’ve definitely worked on.

“Obviously we were happy to play finals last year but we’ve got aspirations of shooting further. I think we need to be a lot more consistent at set piece time. We also need to look after the footy better and build more pressure, that’s why we’ve worked so hard on our conditioning this preseason, because we want to be able to sustain our attack for long periods of time.

“We’d also like to be a little more accurate in and around the breakdown.

“Our S&C coach has done a great job over summer. He’s very stringent and we did a lot of testing and kept track of the guys all preseason using GPS trackers to make sure they were hitting certain targets. We’ve gone pretty deep in that regard.

“I think we’re looking pretty solid across the grades. We’ve had quite a few changes in personnel and there are a lot of new faces at the club and I think that will put us in good shape.”

2017 result:

Ins: Andrew Mamea (Wellington), Alex Halvorsen (South Africa) , Tui Fae (Auckland), Ahmu Tuimalealiifano (Melbourne Rising), Shane Tetzlaff (Norths), Leone Cama (Norths), Peter Lee (Rugby League), Josh Coward (Australian Sevens), Brendan Paenga-Amosa (Southern Districts), Ben Lucas.

Outs: Brendan Mitchell, Richard Kingi (Souths), Issac Fines-Leleiwasa (Brumbies), Jake McIntyre (France).

Key areas of improvement: 

“Definitely our set piece, especially our line out because we were fairly inaccurate there last year,” Virtue continued.

“The other area is pressure and game management. We want to apply pressure and keep teams pinned into corners and that’s something we’ve worked hard on all preseason. We want our key playmakers organising the team and pushing them around the park and we’ve seen that in our trials so far.

“We did quite a bit of theory work to help us get organised but we also manufacture it a little bit in our teams runs. We worked a lot on our non structured attack and created some triggers for our playmakers to help them work to our structures.”

Player(s) to watch: 

“Definitely Issac Lucas. He’s a bit of a star, that kid but I’m not too sure how long we’ll have him because he’ll be playing with the Aussie 20s. Jake Strachan is another who I think will have a big year.

“Issac and Jake are very different players. Issac is very vocal whereas Jake is quiet but he is very composed and that’s what I like about him. Isaac gives us a lot of direction with his chat. They are both super talented and it would be nice to get some real pay out of them this year because I think they’ll both press on to higher honours fairly soon.

“Our hooker Moli Sooaemalelagi has been awesome during preseason but he actually broke his hand a few weeks ago and will probably miss the first few rounds. He’s in phenomenal shape though and I think he’ll go really well.”

Hopes and expectations for the season:

“You’ve always got to aim high and hope that you’ll be around at the back end of the season, that’s probably the first goal,” the coach said.

“I’d really just like to see the guys play to their potential. Going off our preseason and our trial form, it would be nice to see our guys take that next step and take some big scalps throughout the season, we want to be regularly beating the likes of UQ and GPS.

“I don’t think we’ve underperformed in recent years, we’ve just had a very young group but I think it’s time now for our guys to step up and start to dominate oppositions because I think they are ready.”

Who will Sunnybank play in the grand final this year? 

“If Quade Cooper is playing for Souths, I think they’ll have a real shot but you can never go past UQ. They didn’t go too well on Saturday (against Warringah), but they’ve still got players to come back in and they’ve got a very smart coaching group. Jeeps will obviously also be right up there.

“I think all the teams are fairly close this year and if you’re ever a little bit off, any side will be able to roll you. Wests will probably be the other mover, they will be there or thereabouts because they would have got a lot of confidence out of last year and they were a little unlucky in that semi final against us. That’s footy though and I think they’ll be driven to do better.”

Photo Credit: QRU Media – Brendan Hertel.