COLEAMBALLY coach Jamie Bennett acknowledges the task in front of his team on Saturday but is confident his group will be much more competitive this season.
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The Blues open their Farrer League season with a round one trip to Gumly Oval to take on the off-season's big movers East Wagga-Kooringal.
The Hawks enjoyed an 84-point win over Coleambally in Wagga last year and shape as a much more dangerous team this year after the addition of new coach Jake Barrett, Jerry Maslin, Dylan Morton and Mason Dryburgh, just to name a few.
But the Blues have been quietly building over the off-season and Bennett is confident his group have improved on last year.
"We were quite competitive in a lot of games last year, we fell away in some...but i think an extra year of maturity in most of the young blokes will certainly help level that out a bit," Bennett said.
"We've added a few extra players into our playing roster.
"I think we'll be a reasonably rounded side. We don't have the star factor, the Jake Barrett or anyone like that but the reality is we've got a nice even team, they're all a similar age profile so they get along really well, which makes it good fun."
Coleambally has added Toby Blissett, Connor Bock, Ryan Best, Tom McInneny and Kris Duncan but lost their Tiwi Island quartet from last year.
Bennett believes the crucial change has been in the club's depth department.
"We're excited that the club is in a healthy position," he said.
"We've got quite a strong playing roster. We probably had 26 blokes last year, we've probably got 35 this year. 35 to 40.
"We're really pleased that the club is in a nice healthy position and hopefully some results come along the way.
"We're quietly confident but we're certainly not getting too far in front of ourselves."
Sam Breed will miss the first part of the season after undergoing hand surgery but Coleambally otherwise expect to have most of their list available for round one.
Chris Hayes, who experienced a number of shoulder issues last year, has impressed in the pre-season, while Kyle Bennett is also in a much stronger position than this time 12 months ago.
Coleambally won both their pre-season trial games against Hillston and Jerilderie.
Most importantly for Bennett, he saw growth in a number of players.
"I'm pleased. It's always a nice little pleasant surprise when you see a little bit of growth in a few blokes," he said.
"Someone else pops up out of nowhere and you find out yeah I think he can play a bit. We had a couple of those.
"Overall I was pretty happy with the system that we were putting in place but both trial games we had 30 plus guys so you're running lots of rotations and it's a mixture of ones and twos.
"I was pretty pleased, I'm not sure about how strong either the other two sides were, to be honest, we were pretty dominant in both.
"The real challenge will come (on Saturday) when we play East Wagga at East Wagga. We will really find out where we're at then.
"We're definitely not getting too far ahead of ourselves."
