by Paul Cook –

Four weeks ago, Sydney University took part in arguably the game of the Intrust Super Shute Shield season so far, pushing Premiers Eastwood all the way in a thrilling end-to-end encounter that finished with the Woodies holding out 34-29.

Despite the loss, the performance showed exactly what this Uni side is capable of when it fires on all cylinders and it served as a warning to everyone else that maybe this young group is ready to resume their mantle as Sydney club rugby’s heavyweight.

Fast forward a month however and we see a vastly different picture.

The Students visited Concord Oval the week after the Eastwood clash and went down to a fired up and well organised West Harbour. They bounced back with a dogged display to edge out Warringah at Uni Oval No.1 in round 10 before needing a late try against 14 man Parramatta to get the chocolates 28-24, that after trailing 24-7 just after half-time.

If those performances and results served as a warning sign that all was not necessarily well at Uni HQ right now, the loss last Friday to Gordon may well have rubber stamped the belief amongst the rest of the competition that they are indeed a wounded animal.

Without meaning any disrespect whatsoever to the fine performances of the Highlanders, Pirates and Two Blues in three of those four matches in particular, when was the last time a Uni 1st Grade side struggled in such a way against teams that currently occupy 8th, 9th and 11th positions on the ladder respectively?

Of course, a mitigating circumstance here is the crippling injury toll suffered by the club in recent weeks. And it’s not purely the number of bodies piling up in the rehabilitation ward, it’s the quality of personnel that have been cut down that has proven to be the debilitating factor with captain and de facto leader-of-the charge Tom Carter missing the last two games; ditto experienced enforcer Liam Winton, while speedster and game breaker Henry Clunies-Ross was absent from the side that faced Gordon.

All now face an indefinite period on the sidelines but in fairness, the return of the talented Angus Roberts and Aussie Sevens star Greg Jeloudev to the fray hasn’t exactly been a negative. So why is this crop of Students failing to set the world alight in the same way as their illustrious forbears? Is it a temporary blip before normality resumes or a vision of things to come?

Chris Malone faces a challenge to steer his Uni side back to the Shute Shield summit in 2015 – Photo by Paul Seiser/SPA Images

Head coach Chris Malone isn’t immune to the problems at hand and provided some refreshing honesty when Rugby News caught up with him this week, starting with a big dose of reality salts for his players.

“I know we’re capable of playing footy the way we did against Eastwood but we’re not good in an arm wrestle at the moment and 1st Grade footy, I hate to tell you, you’re not going to win at a canter, you’ve got to be able to stay in the fight,” he said. “We’ve had basic errors that have cost us points in every game we’ve played, we shouldn’t have even been involved a contest in some of them but we made them a contest through our own, simple, silly mistakes and that was what got us again against Gordon.”

He’s also aware of the creeping mindset amongst their Shute Shield rivals that this Uni team is ripe for the picking.

“Everyone loves the smell of our blood but that’s what happens when you’ve been at the top for as long as we have and you can either shy away from that or stand up and defend your territory and that’s what we’ve got to do,” said Malone.

“I said to the boys in the sheds at half-time, “If you want to be in the big dance at the end of the year, that was the halfway point of the season.” So the first 40 minutes of the second half of the season has really let us down, but we’ve still got plenty of footy ahead of us and it’s still in our own hands for us to get to where we need to get to.”

While conceding that the injuries they have incurred have been understandably damaging, he also sees the current situation as an opportunity to blood some fresh young talent, and hopefully, it is an enforced scenario that will stand them in good stead, not only for the pointy end of this season, but for the next few years and beyond.

“With injuries to our key players, there is transition. We’ve got a lot of young blokes coming through and our ability to get them up to speed to play 1st Grade, is being tested. I’ve never used the excuse that we’ve got blokes injured because what’s the point? You’ve got what you’ve got and we’ve got good enough players, we’ve just got to get them to play consistently well for 80 minutes at 1st Grade level – that’s the hard part.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys that haven’t played much 1st Grade but, we were within a whisker of the Grand Final last year in a similar scenario with a lot of bad luck through injuries. So hopefully, we get some players back but there’s no point crying about it, we’ve just got to get these blokes right and ready to go.”

Now four years into his coaching tenure at Uni, Malone has seen the highs of 1st and 2nd Grade Premierships alongside that heartbreaking loss after the bell in last year’s semi-final. As he sees it, the current situation is just another step along the pathway to becoming a better coach and creating a better Sydney University footy team in the long run.

“You’re always learning. I could be coaching Penrith every week like Teki [Tuipulotu] and pulling my hair out but the day you stop learning you should give the game away. You never know everything, that’s the big thing and there are different challenges all the time that you have to face but that’s just part of it, that doesn’t bother me.”

While the rest of the competition may be licking their lips in anticipation of Uni’s fall from grace, don’t bet the house on them failing to turn it around and surprise everyone at the end of the year. With the brains trust of Malone, Carter, Tim Davidson and Peter Playford at the helm, and some of New South Wales’ finest young talent on board, this particular tale may yet have an unpopular twist.

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Header Photo: AJF Photography