Over the past few weeks, Rugby News caught up with all 12 Shute Shield coaches from this season and asked them what they thought their club would be focussing on between now and round one next year.

Here’s what they had to say.

Eastern Suburbs (Ben Batger):

“I’m definitely going to give the boys a good break. They worked really hard this year so they’ll get two months off at the very least,” Batger said. 

“I’ve tried to leave them alone as much as possible, but I know they are already talking about going back-to-back, so I don’t think I’ll need to re-motivate them.

“From a first grade perspective, we want to prove that 2024 wasn’t a fluke and at the same time, we want to continue the momentum we’ve built through our lower grades and colts. 

“We’ve got an opportunity to develop into one of the powerhouse clubs in Sydney rugby. 

“We’ve got the infrastructure in place but we can’t afford to let our standards slip and we can’t afford to expect things just to happen because they worked out well this year.  

“We’re going to have to work probably harder than we did this year because once you get to the top of the mountain, it’s easy to fall down and everyone will be coming after us next year. I reckon next year will be even tougher for us.”

Southern Districts (Joe Barakat): 

“I’ll keep this really simple. We have fantastic rugby players at the club. But the teams that did well in the competition this year were able to have good ball carries and offloads,” Barakat said. 

“Even though it looked like we had high offload numbers, the times we offloaded were poor and we didn’t win enough contests. 

“We’ve also got to play more football. We were too predictable and that’s on me. We had good footballers with good skills but we dumbed them down a little too much.  

“It’s Scott’s gig now, but I think there should be a focus on improving the skills around our ball carry so that we can offload more, avoid going to breakdowns, and play more football.”

Northern Suburbs (Zak Beer): 

“We got straight in and reviewed the year and I’ve completed one-on-ones with all the players. Overall, our retention is looking strong,” Beer said.

“Over this last 12 months, we’ve had seven or eight Norths’ players receive Super Rugby opportunities in some way or another, where in 2021, we had just two Norths players get a shot.

“I think that’s a really good sign for what the program’s achieving and for the club moving forward.

“Across the club, we had all four grade teams play in the finals, with fourth grade making the grand final as well.

“We’ve got some good talent coming through our colts and we’ve also had a few players who’ve reached out to come across from other clubs as well.”

West Harbour (Cam Treloar): 

“I think Phil Blake will be fantastic for the club and bring a hard edge that is needed. He’s a defence focussed coach and if you look across the last few seasons, the teams with the best defence have been successful,” Treloar said.

“It’s great to have a slick attack, but if you’re leaking more points than you’re scoring, you can’t win games.

“He’s going to get them fit and I think he’ll be really good for the place.”

Western Sydney (Sailosi Tagicakibau): 

“I’ve done an extensive review on our performance this year and I think our depth probably cost us a bit this year in both our playing and coaching ranks,” Tagicakibau said.

“If we can increase the quality right across our grade and colts programs, it will push higher standards and hopefully build competition for spots.

“That starts with the coaches and we’re confident we’ve got the right people at the club now to help us get to where we want to get to.”

Hunter (Scott Coleman):

Manly (Sam Lane):

“Right now it’s important to give everyone a good break so they can switch off and not think about footy. It’s a long year, particularly when you’re working this side of Christmas,” new coach Sam Lane told Rugby News.

“It’s probably a danger for first year coaches. I’d love to get them all back but I think it’ll help at the backend of next year if we give everyone plenty of time to get away.

“In terms of our rugby, our systems don’t need to change massively and we did a lot of things right at Manly this year.

“There are some areas that I think we can improve and we’re taking steps already to do that.

“The big thing for me is habits. There are quite a few little things that I think certain individuals at the club can improve on and that will be our big focus this side of Christmas.

“We’ll work hard on improving individual skill sets right across the game and that will be different for each player.

“There’s a really good base for us to build on though and if we can lift our standards then I think we can increase our ceiling, lift our base and close the gap between the two.”

Eastwood (Dave Telfer):

“Our forwards coach Dave Dennis and our Director of Rugby John Manenti have both moved to the US to coach in the MLR,” Telfer said. 

“We’ve appointed (former NRL coach) Anthony Griffin as our new Director of Rugby. He’s coached in one of the toughest professional sporting environments in the world and his experience will be invaluable for us. 

“He’ll help us ensure we’re providing a program for our players that will help develop them into first graders. Some will go further, others won’t get there right away but regardless, we want to make sure guys are given every opportunity to develop. 

“We’ll recruit a few guys up top, but the main focus is on developing the players coming through our pathways.”

Warringah (Josh Holmes): 

“We implemented a lot of new systems this year and it took a bit of time for everyone to understand how we wanted to do things as a club,” Holmes explained. 

“With that out of the way, now we can focus on specific areas of our game to improve so we’re a long way ahead of where we were this time last year. 

“We’ll make a few changes to the way we did things this year but mostly we’ll be adapting and focusing on what we built this season.”

Randwick (Steve Hoiles): 

“I think we’ve set ourselves up to be well positioned in the years ahead,” Hoiles, the departing coach said.

“I think it’ll be really important to see what happens with Sydney Rugby (Union) over the summer. They are going to have to make some decisions around what they want the competition to be.

“I’m not having a shot at anyone but I genuinely think the board needs to decide if they want it to be a competition that produces Waratahs and Wallabies or is it something else.

“If what happened this year continues to happen, then clubs are going to go broke trying to chase success and that would be terrible to see.

“At Randwick, I think we’ll see a bit of a different style under a new coach. Shaun (Berne) is a good mate of mine and he has a really smart rugby brain. I don’t think he’ll change things for the sake of it but I know he has strong views on how certain parts of the game should be played.

“It’s really well aligned to how we all think a Randwick side will play but it differs a little from the way I think.

“It’ll be a fresh start in a way and he’s got a really talented group to work with, so I’m excited to see what he can do.

“I think from where we are now, we need to be chasing more titles. We can’t be happy with what happened in 2023 and I think the club as a whole should aim to be in the top four in every grade then chase titles from there.”

Gordon (Harry Fehily):

“We’re looking to make a few tweaks to our coaching staff and add a few people in new positions,” Fehily explained.

“We’ve also got to get some administrational stuff right. Last year, we didn’t play a trial because we mucked up things in the back office and that hurt us at the start of the year.

“We need to be set up for institutional success moving forward and we need certain things in place in the background to allow for that.

“In first grade, we need to add one or two players. We’ll need to find a No.10, then potentially we’ll look to add some depth in one or two other positions.”

Sydney Uni (Todd Louden): 

“We need to try and capitalise on the work that was done this year,” Louden said.

“We’ll also look to make sure we’ve got the depth across the club in our tight five so that occasionally we can run some fresh reserves and we’ll look to learn from some of the close losses we had this year.

“We’ll also need to adapt to some of the new laws over summer that I think will make a big difference.

“I think we’ll see more free kicks from scrums which changes the way you approach set piece and there will be less opportunity to score from mauls, with teams needing to use the ball as soon as a maul stops.

“We already saw a decent reduction in maul tries in the Shute Shield this year and I think that’ll continue next year.”