St Pat's still on hunt for second ANZAC memorial success seven years after their maiden win

But in 2022 it remains the only time the Saints have tasted victory in the derby clash, and in the new era of the Peter McDonald Premiership they are hungry to get their mitts on win number two.

The next edition of the Pat's-Panthers clash takes place this Saturday at Carrington Park.

Saints player-coach Zac Merritt will be watching on from the sidelines this weekend after suffering a hamstring injury in last week's defeat to Dubbo CYMS.

Merritt said the team are determined to end the run of losses against his club in this memorial fixture but it's going to take a far better performance with the ball in hand compared to their recent game with Dubbo.

"It's a good motivator. Last year they blew us off the park in this game over a 10 minute period, so we're looking to make amends for that," he said.

"We're coming in off a loss last weekend against Dubbo CYMS where we were right into that game until the last 15 minutes.

"We had a really poor completion rate of 50 per cent and 18 errors. We need to fix that so we can make it a real battle in this ANZAC Day game."

Panthers won this game 26-6 last year but prior to 2020's COVID-cancelled season the two sides played out the best game in the memorial's short history in a 22-20 result.

Getting a repeat of such a battle requires the Saints offence to click.

Merritt couldn't fault the effort of his team in defence - considering how much of it they had to do against CYMS - but more unpolished football in attack could have long term consequences for the Saints.

"I said to the boys that, realistically, the game against Dubbo ended up the way it should have but for us to hang in there for 65 minutes with that poor completion rate is a massive credit to us," he said.

"We can't continue to do that though. Good teams make you pay for that.

"Our attack isn't at where we want it to be at this point of the season so going into this weekend we're going to try and simplify things a lot.

"We need to cut back on those errors around the play-the-ball and put some attention to detail on keeping things simple because that's when we play our best footy."

Pat's will instead look to channel more of the football that led to them taking a 30-20 win over the Parkes Spacemen in round one of the new competition.

Jackson Duff comes in to replace Merritt his Saturday while Cooper Neilsen gets the promotion to the first grade bench.

The clash at Carrington Park gets underway from 6.15pm.

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