Veteran Shute Shield coach Phil Blake is keen for a fresh start at West Harbour in 2025 and seems confident the club is on the verge of fulfilling its potential. 

Blake spent recent years as the Queensland Reds defence coach but is no stranger to the Sydney club rugby scene, having coached at Manly, Sydney Uni and Southern Districts following a successful rugby league playing career. 

“I don’t see much point in looking at what happened at West Harbour last year or the year before that because at the end of the day, the results haven’t been good enough here for a while now,” Blake said honestly.

“I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen since I arrived, our numbers at training have been really strong and there are lots of good athletes so from that perspective, it’s been really pleasing.”

West Harbour were one of the big improvers of the 2023 Shute Shield season under rookie coach Cam Treloar but struggled to continue the club’s push up the Shute Shield ladder in 2024. 

Despite that, Blake is confident there is lots of potential at Concord Oval. 

“There’s a good opportunity here for any kid that wants to work hard and play with our club,” he said. 

“It’s hard to know exactly what type of rugby we’ll play until we know exactly what our top squad looks like. 

“All I know at this stage is that come April 5, we need to have a team that is well prepared to run out and perform at 3pm and we’ll see how we go from there.

“In our pre-Christmas training block, we just worked on our skills and tried to get fit. We’ll worry about the finer details in the new year when we work out who we’ve got. 

“From there, we’ll construct a game model that suits us and then work on implementing systems and patterns to suit that model after that.”

Blake admitted it was still too early in the year to know exactly what to expect this season but said he was hopeful teams at the bottom end of the ladder could close the gap to the top teams in the years ahead. 

“Every time I’ve come back to the Shute Shield it’s been a strong competition. At the moment, we just need some of the teams at the bottom end of the ladder to lift their game a little to make sure every game is competitive.”