After missing the playoffs for the second successive season, returning Sydney Uni coach Todd Louden is confident his young side and a few older recruits can push the Students back into the finals in 2025.  

A young Uni side lost seven matches by five points or less in 2024 but Louden is hoping his squad can benefit from the lessons learnt last season. 

“We’re hoping we get pay in 2025 for a lot of the hard work that we did to set ourselves up last season,” Louden said. 

“We developed a lot of young players last year and built a lot of depth so we’re excited to see what we can do with that group moving forward.

“We had six players play first grade last year in their first year out of school, so it was a bit of a baptism of fire, which forced them to develop pretty quickly and maybe a little too quickly from a results perspective.”

Uni played finals footy every year from 2017 to 2022, winning three first grade titles in that period, but have struggled to fill the void left by departing players in recent seasons. 

Despite that, Louden seems confident the club has enough good young talent to push back to the top of the Shute Shield ladder. 

“It might potentially take until 2026 to see the full impact of what our young players went through last year, but it’ll happen,” the veteran coach said. 

“We’re already seeing the growth in a player like Eamon Doyle who played first grade last year in his first year out of school at Joeys. 

“He finished the season playing with the Waratahs over in Japan, where he was one of the better players on the field.”

To give his young players time to develop, Louden admitted the club has actively recruited older players ahead of the 2025 season for the first time in recent memory. 

“Considering the age of our group and our changing game model, we’ve brought in a few older players who were Sydney Uni orientated in some way,” he said. 

“We’re hoping those guys can help the younger players develop and give us a bit of stability so that our young players can occasionally make the sort of mistakes that most young players make. 

“The reality is, when young players finish school, we usually don’t see them until mid to late January so you don’t have a lot of time to develop those players physically for the season ahead, whether that’s in grade or colts. 

“They just don’t have the physical attributes to put their bodies on the line week in, week out in the same way that older, more mature players do.”

Louden has also spent summer tinkering with his side’s game model and expects the average ‘ball in play’ time to increase again in 2025. 

He thinks the club’s new game model will suit his playing roster and help the Students fill their Saturdays in August regularly in the years ahead. 

“We’ve got a fantastic supporter base from right around New South Wales and they stick with us through thick and thin,” the coach said. 

“If I could send a message to them, we’re coming!”

“Someone mentioned it at the Catchpole Medal, I can’t remember who it was but the comment was something along the lines of ‘the Death Star is on it’s way back’ and we’re all working hard together to make sure that’s the case.”