St Laurence’s continued their undefeated start to the 2021 AIC season with an impressive 51-17 victory over Iona on Saturday but first XV coach Welmar du Plessis still thinks his side’s best rugby is in front of them. 

“I don’t think we’ve had our best performance yet. The best we’ve played was probably against Downlands in the trial match, so it’s nice to know that we still have more to give,” du Plessis told Rugby News. 

“We’re still looking for that complete 70-minute performance. We left a lot of tries out on the park on Saturday and still had a few handling errors that cost us, so by no means are we perfect. 

“That’s the goal for the season, to produce a 70-minute performance and there are a lot of small things we can improve on to push closer to that.”

Lauries trailed Iona early in Saturday’s round three clash but quickly kicked in to gear in their best attacking performance of the season. 

“We had a slow start to the game and were down by 10 points after 10 minutes but it seemed like the boys just flicked the switch at that point and from there everything started to stick,” du Plessis continued. 

“Our flyhalf controlled the game really well. We wanted to play in the right parts of the field in the first half and stay nice and direct and that meant things started to open up out wide in the second half. 

“Our wingers scored three or four tries on the back of that, which was really pleasing.”

While du Plessis said the Lauries players and supporters are doing their best to contain their excitement, the coach knows that each victory sees his side take a step closer to claiming the school’s first outright AIC premiership since 2008. 

“The belief and confidence is there now and it’s growing every time they run onto the field. Like we said at the start of the season, we’ve got to take it one game at a time and next up we’ve got St Peter’s at home. 

“The way the competition is this year, every team has the ability to win against anyone on their day so it’s really important that we don’t become complacent.”

Lauries and St Pat’s are the only remaining undefeated side’s after three rounds and both face tricky back to back clashes against St Peter’s and Villanova in the next seven days, ahead of the QLD Schools trials next weekend. 

Lauries host St Peter’s on Saturday, then will back up to play Villanova on Tuesday, while Pat’s take on Villa over the weekend, then St Peter’s midweek. 

If the two side’s can win both of those games, they’ll set up a blockbuster round six clash on June 5 that could potentially decide the 2021 premiership. 

“There are a lot of teams that are still in the running so you can’t look too far ahead,” du Plessis said. 

“Pat’s are undefeated, Ashgrove have only lost one match, it’s all still very open. 

“We knew coming in to this season, looking back at this age groups results over the years, it was always going to be a tight competition and that’s exactly how it has played out.”