So that CSU sits in second spot – one point behind frontrunners West Wyalong – with four rounds remaining has come as a pleasant surprise for Huggett.

“It’s been absolutely ridiculous and pretty surprising to be honest, because this is the first time at the club that we’ve had a women’s side for four or five years,” he said.

“We had no expectations, but during the summer time they played in the Blue Mountains sevens comp and from there they wanted to play contact rugby.

“From our first training session we did a bit of one-on-one tackling and you could see the potential there, they didn’t hold back. A lot of them had never played a contact sport before, so it’s quite astonishing to seem the go out and verse teams like Bulldogs and West Wyalong who have played a few years together.”

CSU’s most recent outing was an indication of just how good their development has been, trouncing Harden 158-0.

Though the students were always favoured to win that contest, to do so by such a margin was important to their title aspirations.

“At the time we were on par with Bulldogs and by the looks, we thought we might finish on the same competition points and it might come down to for and against. At the time, Bulldogs were 125 points ahead of us,” Huggett said.

“We just went out and gave it our all as we knew it could mean the difference between playing sudden-death finals or if we got a second chance. It was a very big game for us.

“But Harden, in the sense of sportsmanship, they never stopped trying. The actual last play was them on our line, they kept going – honestly I’ve never seen a side keep going like that in my time in rugby.”

This Saturday will be another big game for CSU as it faces a Cowra side sitting just outside the top four.

“This is going to be a huge one, they obviously won against Bathurst last week so we have to prepare pretty well,” Huggett said.

“But it’s the perfect test for us heading into finals.”