Knox will need to improve on an uncharacteristically poor performance against Waverley in round one to get their CAS campaign back on track when they travel to face Trinity on Saturday afternoon.

Knox were outclassed by an impressive Waverley outfit at Queens Park in round one in what coach Cam Blades described as his side’s most inconsistent performance of this year’s campaign.

“Waverley were pretty clinical and we just couldn’t match them last week,” Blades told Rugby News.

“We’ve played in some big games already this year and we performed really well in those, so we can’t really blame the occasion. It was just one of those games.

“We didn’t start well and Waverley capitalised on that and then we really struggled to get into the game from there. It was one of those days where we just couldn’t really put anything together which was really disappointing after such a promising preseason.”

Blades said the side moved on quickly from the defeat and turned their focus to Saturday’s important clash against Trinity.

“Funnily enough, even though we conceded quite a few points, I thought our defence showed plenty of resilience. We played for long periods without the ball when Waverley were throwing everything at us.

“The positive is we get to move on straight away and hopefully we’ll learn some important lessons from the loss that will help us moving forward.”

Trinity turned it on late in the second half to claim a 22-5 victory over Aloys last weekend and will take plenty of confidence into Saturday’s match.

“All the CAS sides performed really well in the preseason and Trinity’s results were up there with the best,” Blades said.

“They’re still undefeated this year so they’ll have a lot of self belief and they’ve got some good attacking threats right across the park.

“After not performing well in round one, we’ve been focussed on ourselves to be honest and getting back to playing the type of rugby that we can be proud of. We’ve performed pretty well through the trials so we know we’ve got it in us, we just need to perform on Saturday when it matters.”

While Blades said his side wasn’t looking past Saturday’s important clash against Trinity, the coach said his boys still had plenty to play for this season.

“It looks like it’s going to be another tight competition. Obviously with only five games, it’s a bit of a sprint and ideally you don’t want to lose a game because then you’re reliant on other results.

“We’re in that situation now but all we can do is focus on what we can control and try to perform every week to give ourselves a chance.

“There looks to be two pretty dominant sides and the rest of us will need to perform really well to beat them.

“In saying that, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few upsets this year and if that happens then it will probably come down to that very last game with two or three sides still in with a chance.”

In other CAS action, Waverley and Cranbrook meet in the Eastern Suburbs derby and Aloys host Barker.