Most Shute Shield fans thought Southern Districts 2015 title hopes ended when flyhalf Ben Volavola left to join the Fijian national side just under a month ago.

The classy playmaker had been instrumental for the Rebels, guiding last year’s grand finalists to third on the Shute Shield ladder, with three rounds remaining in the regular season.

Surely Souths couldn’t replace a player signed to fill Dan Carter’s shoes at the Crusaders in 2016 in less than a month?

And that seemed true, until Jordan McGregor arose from the woodworks.

The relatively unknown former Australian schoolboy slotted into the Souths No.10 jersey and to the dismay of the Rebel’s rivals, looked an almost carbon copy of his predecessor.

“It was actually pretty easy. I’ve been around the team all year even though I’ve been injured, I’ve been hanging around like a bad smell and I’ve played with most of the guys for a number of years so that made it fairly east to slot in,” the 26-year-old told Rugby News.

Despite missing the majority of the 2015 season through injury, McGregor was given first crack to replace Volavola and had an immediate effect, leading Souths to bonus point wins over Randwick and Penrith.

“The coaches created a game plan that really suited Ben’s style and luckily it suits me as well, so that made it a fairly simple transition,” he added.

“There are good players right across the field, so my job is just to try and give them all as much opportunity as possible. I’ve got to make sure we are playing at the right end of the field, then I let the strike power outside me do their thing.”

The Rebels were far from their best in a disappointing one-point loss to West Harbour last weekend and have been dealt a further blow, with centre Apo Latunipalu and flanker Marcus Carbone both ruled out for the remainder of the season through injury.

Although the Rebels proved far too good for their week one opponents, Sydney Uni, just over a month ago, McGregor expects a far greater challenge this weekend.

“They have a few new players so I’d say it will be fairly different to when we played them a month or so ago. You always know it’s going to be tough against Uni, particularly in a finals match so we’ll need to be at our best.”

The Students will take more than 300 Super Rugby caps worth of experience into this weekend’s clash, however with Souths set to host their first ever finals match at Forshaw, McGregor is confident his side is good enough to beat Uni on Sunday and go on to win the competition in a few weeks time.

“We’ve got the strike power to win it.”

“Our last six weeks have been really strong and we are building momentum nicely coming into the finals. Last week was a little bit of a hiccup but also an eye opener, so we know we need to turn up every week from now on.”

Southern Districts host Sydney Uni at Forshaw Park from 2:30pm on Sunday. The match will be televised live on 7TWO.