By MARK CASHMAN

Southern Districts coach Todd Louden is hoping that a few more of the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together when the Rebels take on Gordon in the Shute Shield match of the round at Chatswood Oval on Saturday.

Louden has gone to his third flyhalf in a little over a month with the selection of Myles Thoroughgood in the candy stripe No.10 jersey this week.

Souths looked very clunky in the backs last week against Northern Suburbs at North Sydney Oval and they really need to get a crack on with their season having lost three of their four games.

Mind you they have had a pretty tough start to 2021 playing Eastern Suburbs, Eastwood, Warringah and Norths – all finals rated teams and the Highlanders are up next.

The game against Norths was one that they should have won hands down having about 70 percent of possession, a seriously dominant scrum and oodles of field position.

They lost 23-13 in front of PM Scott Morrison, leaving any number of chances out on the field and lamenting a number of tactical decisions that everyone at Forshaw felt could have been done better.

Christian Kagiassis moves to the left wing while Fred Dorrough will oversee things from fullback.

With the Super Rugby starts likely to be unavailable Ryan Menzies comes in for George Worth while the prop brigade in Joe Cotton, Tetera Faulkner and Lucio Sordoni are not in the picture.

“We just need to start to feel comfortable with each other (in the backs),” Louden told Rugby News.

“Kags needs to do what he does best and that’s working away on the left wing and we just feel that Dorrough will work at fullback.

“The boys don’t need to go out there on Saturday and rip it apart but we want to feel that we are closer to bringing it all together.”

Louden feels that there is a premiership winning scrum at the club and that their defence has a stingy feel about that will be needed at the back end of the season.

The scrum may well need to be put to one side on Saturday with four of their top squad front rankers missing – one through a blue card and another three being called into the Super Rugby COVID bubble.

The Highlanders have been hit hard on a number of fronts too with Robbie Abel (Waratahs) likely to be missing but a number of injuries has seen their backline revamped.

Reece MacDonald is out with his place being taken by Ben Pollack, who was head coach Brian Melrose first choice at fullback earlier in their year.

They can though welcome back Jaline Graham, the man who played a major role in the premiership run last year, and he will pull on the No.15 jumper.

“He’s (Graham) been on the edge of selection for a couple of weeks now since coming down from Brisbane,” Melrose said. “So it’s good to have someone there with a bit of connection.”

Melrose said he had every confidence in his new No.10 Ben Pollack.

“Ben played quite well at fullback in the first couple of games and we just felt that with Reece injured he was next up,” Melrose added.

“He hasn’t done too bad at the back end of games (at flyhalf) and hopefully he goes well on Saturday.