One bad afternoon that led to a loss to eventual premiers Brisbane Boys College was all that stood between The Southport School and another GPS premiership.

TSS coach Mike Wallace admitted it’s been hard to gauge exactly where his team is at ahead of round one, but welcomes back several key players from last year’s campaign as his side looks to go one better.

Overview with Mike Wallace:

“We haven’t seen the kids for the past two weeks so hopefully they’ve been behaving themselves and doing some training,” Wallace told Rugby News.

“We’ve got a really good bunch of kids this year that have been working hard on the core fundamentals of our game. We’ve been trying to upskill the players right across the team and we’ve been focussing hard on that. We focus more on skill and team work than we do on structure and that’s continued this preseason.

“Our trial form has been patchy to be honest and it’s difficult to gauge where we’re at. We did some good things in a few of our trials and some not so good things in others.

“Our last trial we played against BBC and the scoreline suggested that we had quite a good result but they had rested a lot of players so it’s hard to read into that.

“We’ve also had a few challenges with injuries through the trials so it’ll be interesting to see how we measure up come round one.”

What style of rugby can we expect to see from your side this year? 

“That I can promise you won’t change. My belief is that rugby should be good to watch and fun to play,” Wallace explained.

“So hopefully we can do that this year.

“The great thing about schoolboy rugby is that they love to use the ball and you really notice that when you watch schoolboys compared to Super Rugby or Internationals.

“There’s a lot more ball movement and a lot more adventure and that’s what I love about it.

“Sometimes it works and sometimes it’s catastrophic and I guess that’s why they call them ‘schoolboy errors’.”

2021 Squad:

“We’ve got an interesting group, it’s a mix of boarders and day boys. We’ve got a couple of kids who are back from last year.

“Our captain this year is Kaleb Ngamanu who is in his third year of first XV rugby. Syris Schmidt is vice captain and is also in his third year and we’ve also got Massimo De Lutiis who is in his second year.

“So we’ve got some experience but we’ve also got some exciting young players who will be getting their first taste of open rugby this year.”

Players to watch: 

“Without avoiding the question, I think our philosophy is based around the team effort. If everyone in the team does their job, then the team looks really good.

“Those experienced guys like Kaleb and Syris will obviously add a lot to our team. Then you’ve got Massimo who is a 120kg prop. There’s not many of them running around, particularly at 17 years of age.

“As a whole though, we’ve got a very good group of young men. They are a good team and good footy players but they are also contributing in a number of ways at the school. They’re playing multiple sports, or are involved in multiple extra curricular activities and they’re highly valued by the school and their houses.”

Bold prediction for the season ahead: 

“BBC are going to be really tough to beat, they’re a very good team,” Wallace said.

“They’ve got an excellent coaching staff and some very good players.

“Nudgee are also very strong and extremely well coached. The dark horse I think is Ipswich Grammar. They’ve got a really well balanced team and Kieran Moffat their coach is a very smart rugby man.”