Newly appointed Northern Suburbs coach Shannon Fraser believes the Shoreman will need to continue to evolve as a football side in the years to come, if they are to remain at the top end of the Shute Shield competition ladder.

Under Simon Cron, Norths won the 2016 premiership and reached the 2017 decider in August this year. But with Cron leaving to take on a role with the Waratahs, Fraser will oversee a new era at North Sydney Oval.

“It’s going to be a challenge, coming into a club that is seemingly at the top of their game. But I think that creates a challenge in itself to try and find the few percent that we can gain and keep the club ticking on successfully,” Fraser said.

After coaching a young group at Randwick for the past three seasons, Fraser will inherit one of the Shute Shield’s most confident and now experienced rosters, but the coach still thinks he’ll have plenty of work to do ahead of the opening round in April next year.

“I think you need to evolve and try and build on what has already been done. It’s not just about trying to repeat what the teams that have been successful in the past have done, it’s important that we look forward rather than backwards,” he said.

“In saying that, they’ve clearly had a lot of success on the back of the systems that the club has put in place so there will be some things that we’ll need to keep and other areas where we’ll need to evolve.”

A week in to his new job on the other side of the Harbour Bridge, Fraser said he’s going to take some time to learn more about the club and the culture before he locks in any definitive plans for 2018.

“It’s still very early days. At the moment, I’m on a bit of a fact finding mission to learn what has been done, what the stakeholders enjoyed and what they didn’t enjoy and what they thought could have been done differently,” he said.

“I’ve got my own opinions on how I think the game should be played and where I think we could improve but at the moment, I’m just trying to find out as much about the club as possible because I’d like it be quite a collaborative process as we build the new program.”

As an opposition coach, Fraser has watched closely as Norths have risen from cellar dwellers to competition heavyweights over the past three years and said there was plenty to like about his new group as an outsider looking in.

“They play with the ball a lot and they’re courageous in the way they do that. It sends a really strong message that they’re confident enough in their ability to risk failure at times,” he said.

“I like the aggression and tenacity in their defensive line and I think that speaks volumes about their attitude and culture.

“They’re the types of things that I’d like to harness and build upon when we look to evolve the way we play.”

While Fraser admitted that he won’t be able to replicate the impact Cron has had on the club, the former Waratahs and Fiji assistant coach seemed confident that he still had plenty to offer.

“I’d like to think that I can add to the development of the individual and really push and challenge the players and coaches to be better.

“I’ve enjoyed the role that I’ve played over the last three years at Randwick in really pushing young fellas to reach their performance capacity and we’ve seen a number of those guys at Randwick go on to play higher honours.

“There’s the more established players at Norths, but then there is also a really exciting group of colts and younger guys pushing their way into grade so I’m looking forward to challenging them.”

With Norths’ stars Will Miller and Nick Palmer both set to join a handful of other Shoreman in the Waratahs training squad ahead of the 2018 season, external factors could play a major factor each week when Fraser selects his match day 23.

“As a coach you want to see the most out of your players so I hope all the Norths guys at the Waratahs play Super Rugby every week.

“If they don’t, then they’ll add plenty of value to our group but I’d really like to see likes of Will Miller, Nick Palmer, (Michael) Wells and (Irae) Simone play plenty of Super Rugby because they’re tremendous players.”

But regardless of the availability of his stars, Fraser’s goal for next season won’t change.

“One better. It’s very, very simple. We’ve got a group that has the capacity to win premierships, we know that and as a group, they’ve proven that so anything less is performing under their capacity.”