It’s a new dawn for CAS rugby in 2025. Trinity will face traditional CAS rivals over five rounds in term two, before taking on ISA schools in a regraded competition in term three.

Trinity coach Mick Snowden said his team has played some strong rugby at times throughout the preseason but will need to be more consistent when the competition begins this weekend.

Overview with Mick Snowden: 

“We start our season against Waverley on Friday night down at Southern Districts this weekend, which we’re all really excited about,” Snowden told Rugby News.

“We’ve been going alright through the preseason, but we’ve been a little inconsistent. We played well against Cranbrook and St Pat’s, went down late against Kings but we were too inconsistent against (St) Augustine’s and Joeys.

“It’s hard to read too much into trial form and we’ve been focussed on our processes in the lead up to this week against Waverley.

“In the trials, you’re trying to get things ready for the season ahead and you need to try players in a variety of different spots. The main goal of trials is to find your best team and find the way you want to play and I feel like we’ve done that in recent weeks.

“Last year was disappointing, only picking up the one win. It certainly wasn’t what we planned but to be honest, the wet weather didn’t help us.

“Traditionally, we’re smaller than some of the other teams so when the game slows down, it gets a lot harder for us.

“In saying that, we’re confident that we learned from last season and we think we’ll do better in 2025.”

2025 Squad: 

“We’ve got quite a few back from last year. It’s almost an identical backline to last year, bar a few kids,” Snowden explained.

“In the forwards, we’ve got a lot of kids that were injured or that played twos last year stepping up, then a few 16A boys stepping up as well.”

What style of rugby will we see Trinity this year?

“Hopefully we’ll play an enjoyable brand of rugby,” Snowden said.

“We obviously don’t have the size of the Barker’s, Waverley’s and Knox sides, so we’ll need to push the ball around the field and try to take advantage of some of the speed we’ve got out wide.”

What are you expecting across the competition? 

“We’re really excited about the new-look competition structure and the games against ISA at the back end of the season,” the coach said.

“It’s a great idea and I think it’s going to have a lot of benefits, not just at the first XV level, but all the way down through the grades where you’ll be getting kids playing their last few games of the year against oppositions that match their standard.

“That might see really good teams playing against one another in the 16As, but it’ll also see teams that aren’t so strong in certain age groups play more competitive games against other teams and have more positive rugby experiences.

“At the end of the day, we want more kids playing rugby for longer and making sure kids are playing competitive games will help that. It’s going to be effective on both ends I think.

“In terms of the CAS competition, Barker has almost the same team as last year, so they are going to be tough to beat and they’ve got a few really strong players.

“Knox are always well coached, Waverley have plenty of talent and Cranbrook looked really good when we played them so I think it’s going to be a really tight competition.”