Palm Beach Currumbin Alleygators’ cunning plot to blindside the competition

While most teams will blood their new recruits during pre-season trial matches, the Alleygators will kick that trend in a bid to disguise their true strength ahead of round one.

The Palm Beach Currumbin Alleygators are hatching a cunning plot to blindside the rest of the GCDRU when competition returns on April 18.

While most teams will blood their new recruits during pre-season trial matches, the Alleygators have hinted they may kick that trend in a bid to disguise their true strength ahead of round one.

When asked if the club had snared any big recruits from rival clubs or beyond, PBC rugby manager Michael Bell kept his cards close to the chest.

“We won’t be announcing anything,” the official teased.

“We want to go under the radar.

“Some of them we’ll even keep in cotton wool through the trials for round one.”

Palm Beach Currumbin Alleygators are keeping their 2020 recruits close to the chest. Picture Glenn Hampson (2019)

With an extended trial run of five pre-season matches, Bell says managing the recruits workload will see them player fewer minutes, without missing out entirely.

The Alleygators will bank on Gold Coast Cyclones coach Jed Hogan, assisted by grades coaches Anthony Kennedy and Steve McIntyre, to gel the team into a united outfit before their season-opening road trip to Coomera Crushers.

That responsibility will also fall on returning leaders Andre Sultan and Darcy Hilton, who will form part of the club’s leadership group.

Sultan was awarded the captaincy in 2019 in his first season at the club but Cyclones lock Hilton is every chance of overtaking the sophomore outside centre in 2020.

Bell says the task of finding the club’s voice on the field is already underway.

“We’re going back to good old fashioned Aussie rugby,” he said.

“But there will be a kiwi tinge of physicality up front and razzle dazzle out wide.”