The neutral stadium round pits the Goldminers against the Coffs Harbour Suns and Inner West Bulls tomorrow before the team rises the following day to play the Maitland Mustangs.

The Goldminers have only had two matches this season, for a win and a loss, but now get a big test of their fitness and their depth.

Goldminers coach Jo Cafe said her side coped decently with the tough schedule last season and believes they’ll be up to the task again.

“It’s a very short turnaround between games. Our first game is at 2pm, the second at 6pm and then the next morning at 9am. It’s the same draw we had for this last year,” he said.

“Last year we won two of our three games here and the only one we lost was against Maitland on the Sunday, which was our first loss of the season. We’ve got them again on the Sunday this year.

“This time they’ve got three games as well, whereas last year they only played two. It’s still going to be very tough.”

The Mustangs match is again expected to be the hardest of the bunch but Cafe said the other two matches also present danger in their own way.

“The Coffs game will be tough because they’re still a similar side to last year. We only played them once last year and in that game we won by 12 points. This will be our only game against them this year as well,” she said.

“Maitland are undefeated at this stage and they’ve played three games. They’ve beaten some of the main teams like Newcastle. Inner West are very much an unknown. They haven’t won yet but being a Sydney team though you never know who they could pull in.”

Match time outside of State League has been difficult to come across for the Goldminers.

With the expected return of a top division women’s competition in Bathurst on Thursday night this school term that could soon change.

Cafe said the value of that can’t be underestimated.

“Before State League a lot of the girls haven’t had game time since last year. This will be a great way to keep building up their fitness, finishing and quick transitions in defence, which let us down against Wagga.

“We played the 16s state squad when they were training last week here in Bathurst. We had the girls from uni away but still had seven who played. We only won by one point but it was great to get out on the court.

“The girls are really positive and I think they’ll take a lot away from their last game.”

All 10 teams in the State League competition will be playing at least one match over the busy weekend of action, which gives all teams the perfect opportunity to assess each other.

Captain Teagan Burke has recovered from her knee injury but is away on holidays.

Claire Woolmington will be unavailable as she recovers from a nose injury picked up in her Group 10 league tag match, and Olivia Doble has been promoted into the side to fill the spot.

BATHURST GOLDMINERS: Rachel Murray, Laycee Covington-Gorst, Hannah Cafe, Bronte Emanuel, Jess Matthews, Chelsea Noon, Meredith Jones, Alisha Romaniuk, Neive Roebuck, Olivia Doble.