The students have announced their new coach for 2016, former assistant Pip McIntosh, and they will also be boosted later in the season by the addition of Dave Conyers to the coaching staff.

Conyers is currently in the United States coaching the Kennesaw State University side, but will spend the majority of the season with the students in Bathurst when those duties finish.

McIntosh joins Conyers himself as one of the few people to coach both the CSU and Bathurst Bulldogs first grade sides, having linked with the students as an assistant to James McLaren in 2014.

CSU have struggled in the past two seasons, finishing on the bottom rung of the ladder and winning just twice in 2015.

It means that McIntosh is starting with one major piece of humorous ammunition for the next time he speaks with McLaren.

“At least it means I only have to finish last to match him, anyway,” he joked.

“Seriously, though, already we’ve got a huge boost by getting Dave to come and help when he gets back. He knows what it takes to win in this competition and he’s so good with the forwards especially. He’ll be a huge asset.

“This is going to be a big challenge. We obviously struggled last year and we were without much experience as a playing group, but they are a terrific group of kids and they do have a lot of talent.

“It is hard to set goals because we’re coming from where we are, but mostly I just want to see improvement. I want to see a lift in fitness more than anything.

“And once the games start, we need to narrow that gap between our for-and-against. We were conceding 40 points a game last year, and scoring about 12, which is totally unsatisfactory for a university team.”

The students have relied in the past on a smaller forward pack than the older, more experienced teams, doing enough to at least hold their own and allow their fast and skilful backline to make them a competitive unit.

That break-even forward philosophy wasn’t manageable in the past couple of seasons, thanks almost entirely to an ever bigger lack of size and power.

As a consequence the backline rarely, if ever, had room to work, and their set pieces were being found out week after week.

“I want us to play how you would expect a university team to play: fast and attacking,” McIntosh said.

“We lacked direction at times last season and the inside backs is an area we need to fix, and we were getting dominated in the forwards. But there were some good signs from the colts team and I’m confident some of those young players can make the step up.

“James [McLaren] spoke last year of trying to not be too structured and play on as fast as we can and I want to kind of build on that.

“I don’t want us to be too structured in our approach. I’d prefer they just play what is in front of them and really attack from the start.”