'The culture is starting to come back': Early signs positive for CSU Rugby

The club have been impressed with the strong turnout early in the year to their pre-season training sessions, and take heart in knowing there's still plenty of potential first-year students who could join the ranks.

As for the new recruits they've mustered up so far, the team have managed to source players not only from different clubs but from different codes as well.

New coach Jim Connors said it's great to see lots of support for the club coming from different places.

"We've had a few players come across from a few of the rugby league clubs for our training sessions, which is great," he said.

"There's a few reserve graders from those league clubs who are keen to try their hand at union, especially with the growing popularity of the club at this early stage of the year."

The key word continuing to float around the CSU camp is 'culture'.

It's something that the committee feels that the club has taken great strides towards improving.

Connors, along with new assistant coach Sam Chamberlain, said the early signs in that area are trending positively.

"From chatting to a couple of members of the club who have been at training since the start of the year, the culture is starting to come back and getting ingrained into the training ranks," he said.

"Numbers-wise we're finding that we're getting a phenomenal amount of people to training week on week. There's both new faces and longstanding members of the club who are among that.

"There's always difficulty for a club with the level of turnover that we have to be all best friends, compared to a longstanding side who have the same team members together for many years."

CSU have continued to put the word out to any players outside of the university community to get on board with the team.

"The executive team has placed a lot of importance in marketing the CSU club as a community club for Bathurst, as a town, and an alternative to the premier rugby union club in Bathurst," he said.

The club have lined up a number of trial games.