With a new coach, a new general manager and pretty much an entirely new first grade starting XV, Sydney Uni are going to look fairly different both on and off the field in 2022.

Experienced coach Sean Hedger has replaced Rob Taylor as first grade head coach and inherited a new look Uni side with plenty of holes to fill.

Despite that, Hedger and his Students are still chasing Shute Shield success in 2022.

“We’ve lost more than half the side from last year. I think they counted 12 of 15 from a few matches that have moved on,” Hedger told Rugby News.

“Matty Hood has gone over to the MLR, Matt Sandell is studying at Oxford, Tom Osbourne is also over there and he actually made his debut for Harlequins a few weeks ago.”

“We’ve still got a key group of experienced guys that form our leadership group though. Henry Clunies-Ross, Jack McCalman, Timmy Clements.

“They’ve been really important and they’ve been the ones that have set the standards and educated the younger guys on what is required to play and be competitive in first grade footy.”

Hedger has coach professionally and in clubland for the best part of two decades. Most recently he had a successful two year stint as attack coach at Kintetsu Liners in Japan, after spending five years coaching Bond University in Queensland.

But this pre-season may just be Hedger’s biggest challenge yet.

Aside from Covid and a few weeks of back to back rain, the coach is aiming to build a successful Shute Shield first grade team from a talented crop of colts and lower grade players who have barely touched a football over the past two years.

“Some of those colts boys have only played a dozen games in two years and considering a lot of them were playing first colts at Uni, they were winning a lot of those games by big margins,” Hedger said.

“We’ve tried to expose them to the intensity of first grade as much as possibly by doing a lot of 15 on 15 work, which we’ve been lucky to be able to do.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how the young guys across the competition adapt, but I know how keen they’ll all be after being deprived of footy for the last two years.”

Uni have a strong record of developing young players into Shute Shield stars in their first season or two in grade footy.

The Students won back to back premierships in 2018 and 2019 with a backline filled with players barely off their green P’s and Hedger is hopeful of achieving something similar in the coming years.

“You don’t want to mess too much with a formula that is working, so I won’t be changing too much,” he said.

“Rob Taylor was great through the transition and we spoke a lot about the types of game models we both like to use and there were a lot of similarities.

“Our assistant coaches have both been great. Mark Bakewell is adding a lot in the forwards and Brian Smith is bringing some fresh ideas to our attack.”

The Students’ opening month of the season includes clashes against Warringah, Randwick, West Harbour and Hedger said his side won’t be taking any of those games lightly.

“Having watched the Shute Shield from a far over the past few years, it seems like there’s been three tiers to the competition. You knew who the top four were and you knew the bottom teams but everyone else was sort of in the middle.

“I don’t think that will be the case this year.

“Joe Barakat is going to make a big difference at West Harbour. Parra are going through a massive rebuild and Bubba Coleman is spending like a drunken sailor in Newcastle.

“If you look at us, when you lose 12 from your starting 15 from one year to the next, you’d assume that we’ll be starting from a further back position than we would like but I’m confident we’ll be able to make up that ground by the end of the year.