By Matt Findlay; Photo: Warringah Rats

If you don’t know the narrative leading into Saturday’s elephantine, top-of-the-table Shute Shield blockbuster between Warringah and Sydney University, odds are you’ve been living under a rock.

The Rats are now four points clear on top of the table amid an incredible, eight-game winning run that stretches back to round four, the week after they were so shockingly hammered 50-nil by the students.

It’s natural to assume that drubbing acted as the winning streak’s catalyst and it’s just as natural to assume the Rats’ motivation this week is righting the wrongs from that defeat.

Not so, not the latter at the very least.

“It’s not about redemption and it’s not about any sort of revenge, it’s about continuing to tick boxes because I still don’t think we’re anywhere near our best,” Rats coach Mark Gerrard said, his side fresh from a last-start, 36-19 win over Eastern Suburbs.

“Don’t get me wrong we’ve been good and we were good last weekend, we pride ourselves on staying in the fight and we did that last weekend, but there’s certain things I know we can and need to continually improve on if we’re going to achieve what we want to achieve.

“We’ve been taking that (round three) loss on the chin ever since and it is still in my mind in terms of the things we were poor at and Uni were good at, the areas we didn’t apply ourselves well enough in. But we had to move on from that loss pretty quickly.”

Move on quickly they did, clearly. 

Following that defeat the Rats downed Gordon (25-13), Randwick (35-27) and then Southern Districts (38-7) to get their campaign back on track, before a famous come-from-behind win over Manly (31-25) and a landmark victory over Eastwood (21-19).

“I’ve been pretty hard on the boys about competing, not just physically but mentally as well and there’s been a number of those mental challenges,” Gerrard said, pointing specifically to those latter two games.

“Having to come from behind to beat Manly gave us the confidence we needed to beat Eastwood away for the first time in 11 years, but then there was another mental battle in rolling up our sleeves at home to beat West Harbour (30-24) the week after.”

Those mental battles didn’t end there though, nor have they yet.

Warringah took down Western Sydney (49-24) following that win over the Pirates before last week’s win over the Beasties leading into Saturday’s test against Uni, despite a number of “limitations” they’ve had to overcome.

“It’s been testing at times … we’ve only had one field session in the last couple of weeks because of the weather and field closures, that’s another of those limitations that create another mental battle,” Gerrard said.

“But the boys have been pretty good in that regard because all season a focus has been them owning their preparation and driving the standards rather than having us as coaches tell them what to do, they have to want to do it and we’ll just provide the environment for that.”

The 2019 competition is as close as any in recent memory but Warringah do, comparatively, have what some might call and easier run to the finals and a victory over Uni would cement their spot in the box seat to claim the minor premiership.

“That’s a reward for hard work though, and even though the boys have been doing a lot of hard work that’s the last thing I’m thinking about,” Gerrard said.

“Where we are now I’ve probably been even harder on the boys because I don’t want us to get comfortable. It’s those bloody rugby cliches again, but it really is a weekly focus for us.”

Warringah host Sydney Uni at Rat Park on Saturday afternoon, kicking off at 3pm.