Technically, Gordon will start the 2022 season as the reigning Shute Shield premiers although Stags coach Billy Melrose isn’t giving that much thought.

“I’m worrying more about the rain at the moment than being the reigning premiers,” Melrose laughed.

“We’re the last team to win the comp but considering the end to last year, I wouldn’t say we are the reigning premiers. There’s a big difference between the two and I’d rather work towards being the next premiers rather than living in the past.”

After helping Gordon to a breakthrough premiership as an assistant coach in 2020, Melrose took the top job at Chatswood Oval ahead of last year’s interrupted season.

“2021 came around very quickly for everyone I think. It was the latest finish to the season we’ve ever had, then obviously we had a lot of coaches and players move on to other opportunities following on from the success the club had in 2020.

“It was a strange season, but it gave us the opportunity to blood some young guys which should benefit us moving forward.

“This year, we’ve now had an extra long preseason and we used that time to recruit and develop some players to bolster some specific areas of our roster.”

Considering Gordon’s success in 2020 and the shortened pre-season, Melrose said he didn’t try to change too much last year.

The Stags were sixth when the competition was postponed with six wins from their nine matches and the coach is confident his group can build on that this year.

“The way you can play is often determined by the players that you’ve got and we didn’t have a lot of time to adapt to those changes last year. We certainly lost a couple of key game controllers and some powerful players from 2020 so mixing and matching how we could play definitely needed some evolution and transition.

“This year, with a little more prep time, I think we have a greater opportunity to evolve a little and play a style to suit the squad.”

Gordon face a tricky start to the 2022 season, with an opening round road trip to Newcastle to face Hunter, one of four away matches in the opening six weeks.

“It’s going to be a really competitive comp and it’s been like that for quite a while now.

“It’s been a particularly active internal recruiting season across the Shute Shield clubs and I think tha  had to do with the off season being so long and Covid making entry harder for players overseas. Some of the lower finishing teams from 2021 are very well resourced and doing their best to push themselves up the ladder and that’s only going to make things tighter by the look of it .

“We’ve got some new players, we’ve got some emerging players and we’ve got some of the boys that have had prior success.

“It’s a new mix and we’ll look to add and subtract and evolve the way we play a little bit and hopefully it works out in a good way.”