By Jake Bull
The Illawarra Cutters will be in action for the second time in pre-season with a trial against the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs at Belmore Oval on Saturday.
After starting their pre-season with a 28-12 win against Newton Jets last weekend, the Cutters will be hoping to build on that this weekend.
With the Dragons first-grade squad heading to England for the World Club Challenge, some of the first team squad has been left behind to get match time for Illawarra.
Included amongst those names are Charly Runciman, Mike Cooper and Kris Keating who all will be hoping to impress Illawarra head coach Scott Logan and the Dragons coaching staff.
Logan is confident that despite the mixture of part-time players and Dragons squad members, the cohesion will still be strong.
“A lot of the structure is very similar. We’ll just simplify some stuff for the part-timers and those guys to slot back in,” Logan said.
“We had six guys train with us on Friday and we did have a couple of late withdrawals because of the Charity Shield but those guys slotted in seamlessly during the week and I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that at all.”
The game will be played late in the afternoon with it scheduled to kick off at 5.00pm.