Season Preview with Scott Fava
The 2025 Shute Shield season kicks off on Saturday with Southern Districts hosting Eastern Suburbs at Forshaw from 10:45am on Saturday.
We want to see as many Rebels supporters back at Forshaw as possible this year and have dropped gate entry to $10 to make winter’s best Saturday afternoon even more affordable in 2025.
There are also limited tickets still available for the Southern Districts Season Launch lunch at Doltone House. Please email gm@southerndistricts.com.au if you’d like to attend or buy online.
To get you ready for round one, keep reading for an overview of the season ahead with new head coach Scott Fava.
Rugby News’ Shute Shield Season Preview
Southern Districts with Scott Fava
After a number of lean seasons, former Wallaby and Rebel Scott Fava has taken the top job at Southern Districts and wants to rebuild things at Forshaw from the base up.
Fava coached Northern Suburbs for several seasons in the early 2010s and returns to the Shute Shield hungry to push the Rebels up the competition ladder.
Overview with Scott Fava:
“I live locally and had been watching the club from the outside in for a while now and I could see that the club wasn’t engaging enough with the local community or the junior clubs,” Fava said.
“My lad plays at Burraneer, one of Souths’ feeder clubs, and you could kind of see what was missing.
"There was an opportunity to rebuild a club that I played at back at the start of my career, but there was also an opportunity to help shape a club that my son will hopefully be a part of in a few years time.
“So from a selfish point of view, I want to see the club get back to where it should be for my son, but there’s also an exciting challenge from a coaching perspective as well.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I’m loving the role and loving getting my hands dirty at a club that wants to change.
“We’ve got a board that wants to take the club forward. We’ve had Andy Marinos, the former Rugby Australia CEO join the board recently and Marcus Carbone, our former first grade captain is also back involved.
“We’ve got people like that that care about the club, but also care about the direction of rugby and want to be part of the solution.
"I coached at Norths for a few years in the early 2010s and you can see some similarities between Norths then and Souths now.
“Back then, they had lost their way. They paid big money to get Wendell Sailor to play one game for the club, but weren’t looking after their juniors and colts.
“They’d made some poor choices and ignored their pathways.
“Souths were a little the same in recent years but the club has identified where they went wrong and now there are a lot of good people working hard to turn the place around.”
What style of rugby will we see from Southern Districts this season?
"Southern Districts has always been known for their toughness and grit and we want that to continue,” Fava said.
"17 of the last 20 Wallabies the club has produced have played in the tight five, so set piece has always been a big focus at the club.
“We want that to continue, but we also want to play a style that allows the rest of our players to push their case to play at the next level. That’s our role as a development club.
“We want to play with grit, but that can’t be our sole focus.
"We want to showcase our flare and give guys like Issac Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens at fullback the chance to show what he can do with the ball.
“He can’t do that if he kicks the ball back every time he gets it."
Player(s) to watch:
"We lost the majority of our first grade squad from last year so we’ll look very different to last season,” Fava explained.
“Based on that, every player is a player to watch.
“We were forced to build a new squad and we’ve done that with players pushing up from our colts - we’ve got 12 colts pushing into grade - which we haven’t had for a while.
“Then we’ve got country kids, we’ve picked up a few Canadian internationals, some guys from New Zealand.
“The simple answer is, we don’t know who to watch but we’re excited to see what a number of them can do come round one.”
Which two teams will play in this year’s grand final and why?
“Obviously we’d love to be playing in a grand final this year but that’s not what we’re focussed on at the moment,” the coach said
"As a group, we are focussed on getting our processes right so that we’re a better team and a better club coming into 2026.
“We’ll be fighting to win every game, that’s for sure, but there’s no emphasis on where we finish this year.
“Looking at the rest of the competition, Easts will be strong again and Warringah, with a few Souths boys playing up there, will also be hard to beat.”
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