Despite cold and wet conditions forecast for Thursday night’s bumper representative clash between GPS and CAS, GPS first XV coach Greg Thompson still thinks speed can be the difference for his side. 

Thompson’s starting side features a smaller, more mobile forward pack compared to their CAS rivals and plenty of speed out wide. 

“There are a number of ways you can use speed to your advantage, even if it is wet,” the coach told Rugby News. 

“We’d obviously like to play expansive attacking rugby, but if the weather doesn’t allow for that then we’ll be happy to kick the ball in behind them and use our speed out wide to chase hard and build pressure in the right areas in the field.

“Particularly at Knox where it can be quite slippery, that’s a tactic that can work really well.”

The GPS forward pack, led by Kings No.7 and captain Will Johnston, will also use their speed and target the breakdown to halt the attack of the big CAS forwards. 

“The side looks strong across the park. When you’ve got six good teams to pick from, you’re able to select the cream of the crop. 

“We’ve got a good solid front row that I know well from Joeys. Then we’ve got a strong backrow. Our No.8 Sam Allsopp from Riverview has been particularly impressive. 

“The backrow are all pretty hard at the breakdown and we’re probably a bit more mobile than them, so hopefully we can steal a few pilfers.”

In the backs, Thompson seemed confident that his team could attack in a number of different ways, despite the limited preparation. 

“It’s hard when you’ve only got two days to work with the team. You want to give them some tools to use but you don’t want to overcomplicate things either,” Thompson said. 

“You’d hope we can play wide but if the weather isn’t great then we will play field position and then attack from the right areas. 

“We’ve got Johnny Chan at No.12 who is a big strong ball runner, so we can use him in tight but we can also go out the back and attack out wide when we need to as well.”

Thompson agreed that tight results in recent years have added to the GPS and CAS rivalry. 

“The guys also get a lot more exposure to one another now with the trial season and that adds to it. I know a few of the CAS schools had some strong results in those trials so the form suggest it’ll be a really tight contest.”

GPS take on CAS at Knox on Thursday from 7pm.