By Finn Morton; Photo – QRU Rugby

Most coaches would be thrilled with a 42-17 victory away from home.

But not Elwee Prinsloo.

The GPS Head Coach thinks that his side are still falling short of “the markers we [they] set for ourselves [themselves].”

In the Grand Final rematch against UQ on Saturday, GPS put in a commanding display and while it seemed like there were plenty of positives to take from the match, Prinsloo thought differently.

“I don’t think that we were that great to be honest. I said to the boys that as far as the outcome is concerned, we wanted five points which we got. But if we look back at the Brothers performance and the way we played, I don’t think we hit some of the markers we set for ourselves,” claimed Prinsloo.

“It’s always emotionally difficult to come off a game like Brothers where there’s a bit of hype around it and to then really get up for another really good team.

“I thought our set-piece was really solid, but I thought that our mauling was really poor which is something that we will be addressing in this bye week. I thought that we were quite direct. Whenever we are direct if it’s through the midfield or through the edges, that’s when we look at our best. You could see when we started playing a bit of lateral footy, that’s when they scored the points.

“Both of their tries came from our poor kicking. You’ve got to get second use out of the football and that’s what we just didn’t get. We just allowed them to launch attack after attack against us. The other thing was that we must tidy up our breakdown, that would allow us to have the ball and really build on that momentum.”

Just as they did the last time they played the Students, GPS walked away with a trophy.

The Bunter Bowl was once again up for grabs but Jeeps reclaimed the silverware for a fourth consecutive week.

Prinsloo acknowledged that the trophy was motivation for the side to keep putting in strong performances.

“Anytime you play for a trophy it’s special. Any team and any coach always want to make sure that they always win when it comes to a trophy.

“But it’s about consistency for us, it’s about improvement. We know that we are nowhere close to playing our best footy but we’ve got to make progress. I’ve felt that we’ve done that in a way over the last two or three weeks.

“It’s special to play for silverware but for us it’s really about improvement to give ourselves the opportunity to play for the big cup at the end.”

The victory over UQ comes a week after beating the previously undefeated Brothers 38-16 at Yoku Road.

Prinsloo laughed off any claims that GPS were now the competition favourites, identifying Brothers as the team to beat in the 2019 season.

“We can’t be seen as the form team. Two weeks ago before Brothers everyone was saying that we had some wins, but some uninspiring wins. Now suddenly when we beat Brothers we’re the form team. We’re happy to just do our thing.

“I think that Brothers are still the form team. They’ve scored the most amount of points in the competition so you’ve got to give it to them.

“It’s white noise. People change their opinions every week about where you’re at. Of course we know that we are a good team, and we say that in a very humble way because we are training to be a good team.

“There’s been no talk throughout this entire round about back-to-back Premierships or any of that nonsense.”

The Gallopers will spend their bye week focusing on recovery and time “away from footy” by doing some charity work on Thursday with the Ronald McDonald House.