Group 10: St Pat's have chance to make it back-to-back wins over Bathurst Panthers

But that's the scenario for the Saints in this Saturday's magic round meeting against Panthers at Carrington Park, and they won't want the defending winner sensation to go away any time soon.

Pat's levelled up the derby head-to-head this season at 1-all thanks to their close 16-14 success at the same ground last month.

Which team breaks the deadlock this weekend will likely come down to who can shake off the rust quicker, since both sides haven't played for at least three weeks.

Pat's player-coach Zac Merritt said the team are excited to finally get stuck back into football after a long time away from the field.

"They're in the same boat as us. It's three weeks since we've played and four weeks for them. It's a bit frustrating so it's great to finally get here," he said.

"It's 1-all for the local derby this year, and as always we're focusing on ourselves. We'll be doing our homework on Panthers and looking at how they've been playing but that's a bit hard with both teams coming off long stints of not playing.

"The main priority though was just to look at what we can improve on."

Before the break St Pat's lost back-to-back games in different circumstances.

They went down in literally the last five seconds of the match in their game against Orange Hawks before going down more convincingly in a challenging trip to Mudgee Dragons.

The lengthy break has given the Saints plenty of time to reflect on those defeats, as they still try and make a late push up the ladder.

"We did a video session last week and we saw a few things in that where we've looked a little lost and we haven't been taking opportunities," Merritt said.

"Mudgee pulled away from us in the back end of that game, but what we saw from the video was that we were definitely in that game if we took our chances.

"We need to be competing for the full 80 minutes. It's Group 10. You can't be competing for 79 minutes, it has to be the whole thing. We've learned that a couple of times this year, like in games we've had against Mudgee and Hawks."

Returning players and a new recruit means the Saints will bring a different sort of game to this weekend's derby.

"Majority of the boys have been doing their own fitness in the time away, and we've been back ripping in for two weeks now," he said.

"Tyler Colley will be back this weekend and we're welcoming a player from Forbes, Hayden Bolam, for his first game. He's won a couple of premierships back home so he'll add some experience."

Kick-off is 1.45pm.

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