An injury riddled Barker first XV side head in to Saturday’s opening round CAS clash against Trinity quietly confident despite the fact they’ll be missing a number of key players.

The 2018 and 2019 CAS premiers won four of their five trial matches in recent weeks and will be looking to hit the ground running when the official season kicks off this weekend.

“I think we’ve learnt and improved every week through the preseason, this team is very conscious of consistent growth,” coach Dean Hargreaves told Rugby News.

“We improved every week in different areas of the game. From our tactical play, to our mental toughness and our game style.

“We’ve just been struggling with injuries all year and I’m looking forward to a week when we hopefully have everyone available for selection.”

Barker beat Riverview 33-31 at Leichhardt Oval on Saturday in a curtain raiser to the Waratahs match and also claimed victories over Joeys, Stannies and Oakhill during the preseason.

The side’s one loss came early in the preseason against Scots.

“We were disappointed with our performance against Scots. We had a few injuries during the game and we didn’t deal with that very well. All credit goes to Scots though, they were particularly good in the forwards and with a few injuries, we struggled to manage the game.

“But from that, we bounced back and beat Joeys the next week. That was our most pleasing performance of the year and it was great to see the guys rebound like that. We went in with a specific game plan and we were able to execute.”

Hargreaves said it was still too early to predict how the CAS season will play out in the coming months.

Barker face Trinity and Cranbrook on either side of the June long weekend, ahead of matches against Aloys, Waverley and Knox after the July school holidays.

“To be honest, I haven’t seen much of the other sides just yet. We had a bit of a run against Knox early on and they’ve got some very talented players.

“I think they’ll be a lot stronger this year than they have been in recent years. Waverley will be big and physical and Cranbrook look like they’ll be really competitive.

“As always, anyone on their day will be able to win and that’s going to make it a really tight competition. I also think the CAS rep teams will be really strong off the back of that.”

Hargreaves is hoping his squad’s depth will help Barker open their season with a victory over Trinity at home on Saturday.

“We’ve lost one player for the season and we’re missing another three this week and all four of those boys would have been looking at State selection or higher this year.” the coach said.

“They are four really quality players. Having said that, we’ll still put out a good team but those guys will definitely be missed.

“We haven’t had a week yet where everyone has been available so I’m hoping we overcome that at some stage this year.

“Trinity are a pretty young team, I know they’ve got a lot of year 11s so I’d suggest that they’ll try and move the ball around and play with lots of energy. I will sit down with our game drivers and prepare a game plan that suits our strengths and challenges Trinity in some key areas.”