Southern Districts will look to use a big, mobile forward pack to play a more expansive, attacking style throughout their 2022 Shute Shield campaign.

On the back of two frustrating shortened seasons, Rebels’ coach Todd Louden appears confident that his young group is ready to consistently match it with the top teams in the competition.

“We’ve got an excited group of players who are extremely driven on the back of two frustrating years. We’ve kept the majority of our forward pack, bar one or two guys, and they’re desperate to get on the field,” Louden told Rugby News.

“This is the most driven I’ve seen a group in my time.”

The Rebels bid farewell to a handful of experienced senior players at the end of 2019 and have spent the past two Covid interrupted seasons blooding plenty of young blood.

“We’ve been a young team for a few years now and we’ve got more young guys pushing into grade from colts, which is great,” Louden said.

“Physically, they’re all looking good but because they haven’t played a lot of rugby over the last two years and they’ve spent most of the time in the gym, we’ve had to work hard on their skillset.

“Talking to the other clubs, a lot of coaches are seeing the same thing, particularly with the young guys coming out of school. Because they haven’t played much footy, there’s been a real need to focus on skillset.

“It’s not something I’m worried about, it’s just been an interesting observation from a pretty unusual period.”

Louden said his side is desperate to start the season better than they did in 2021, where the Rebels lost three tight matches by just three points to Easts, Eastwood and Gordon in the opening five rounds.

“We’ve got some new players coming into the group, so we’ve altered the way we play to suit our personnel. We’ve got some clear goals in attack and defence.

“We’ve really overhauled our defence and will defend quite differently to how we have in the past but the boys have picked that up really quickly. In attack, we want to be a bit more expansive because I think we’ve got the forward pack to play that way.”

But Louden said that doesn’t mean Souths’ will put any less time focus on maintaining a dominant set piece.

“That’s the one thing that we’ve prided ourselves on over the last few years, our forward play,” he said.

“That is still there and won’t be going away anytime soon but I think with this group, we’ve now got the ability to move the ball to wider parts of the field, to kick to space, all with an attacking focus.

“We’ve picked up a genuine game manager in a guy by the name of Liam Richmond. He’s been really impressive and he’s a very astute rugby player that has picked things up very quickly.

“Originally he’s from Brisbane but he’s spent the last few years down in the Brumbies academy. He’s had a few injuries along the way and has floated under the radar a bit and we’re really excited to have him at the club.”

The Rebels challenge another tough start to the season, with clashes against Gordon, Norths and Easts in the opening five weeks.

Louden admitted it was hard to predict too much at this point of the year, but seemed confident his side will be in the mix at the back end of the season.

“It’s the silly season at the moment, there are always lot of whispers floating around at this time of year.

“It looks like a lot of sides have been recruiting pretty heavily whereas we’ve been happy with the stability of keeping the majority of our group.

“We’ve had a real focus on us. I know it’s cliché, but you can never really know about the other teams until they get announced for round one, so there’s no point focussing on it too much.

“It’s going to be a close season again though, I think every coach will agree with that.”

Souths open their season at home against Manly on April 2.