Hunting Bathurst Bulldogs, surviving an injury crisis and trying to get heads around a radical new rule - there's plenty on Orange Emus coach Nigel Staniforth's mind during the season break.
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Staniforth will return as coach after Emus finished runners-up in his first season in charge following a long playing career.
While the season proper is still around four months away, preparations are in full swing with a few burning questions hovering over the 2024 Blowes Cup, not least of which is a new tackle rule.
Players will no longer be allowed to tackle above the sternum from 2024 as Rugby Australia moves to address concussion concerns.
While he is bracing for round one chaos, Staniforth believes Emus and the game as a whole are well placed to adapt.
"It's going to be very interesting to police," he said.
"I'm hoping they give some time for adjustment but I imagine it will be policed pretty heavily at the start and therefore we may have a few more penalties as players get used to it.
"Funnily enough we have quite a smaller team so potentially it could help us given we have to go pretty low anyway.
"Hopefully after a while what it will create, probably the year after, is more free flowing rugby with offloads and the ball carrier getting more of an advantage over the tackler.
"It's definitely something that we are thinking about for preseason and something we need to get drilled into the boys."
How can they beat Bathurst?
Emus was on the receiving end of a big grand final score as Bulldogs secured back-to-back titles.
After dominating the competition for the past two seasons, they will enter 2024 as raging favourites.
Staniforth believes the harsh lessons dished out to his young side had them in good stead for the upcoming campaign and said he expected the majority of them to hang around, a luxury the club has not always enjoyed.
"We've learned a lot off this year, mostly game management and how to get through a season without just relying on those senior guys to drive us through the year," he said.
"Those younger guys, especially the play makers, have learned to get us through games and steer us around the park.
"Every year since I've been here I think we've averaged about five first graders moving on. The last couple of years we've seen some big numbers which was to be expected with the older guys like myself stretching out their football careers.
"Luckily enough we had a really good bunch of guys last year who are still young in their learning of rugby but they've really come along.
"Last year was very impressive and that was probably the standout of the year, how much those guys learned how to play rugby at a high level and game management.
"Being a younger team hopefully the majority if not all of them will be around for 2024."
Changing it up
While player movement will be kept to a minimum, there have been some changes to the coaching structure with some additional duties being added.
Co-coach Tim Davidson, a former Super Rugby player, returns again.
"We've changed our coaching structure a bit in first grade with myself being head coach with my co-coach Tim Davidson and Andy Hillan will come up as well so we will divide and conquer roles," Staniforth said.
"We will also oversee other roles across the senior grades as well.
"I'll look after attack to a certain degree for the senior grades at the start of the year and hopefully it will flow on to those grades."
