Souths' last three or four weeks of men’s Premier League Hockey has been the product of plenty of hard work and adaptation to new structures and systems.

Today they get the opportunity to turn that hard work into a definitive statement as they take a full-strength squad to Lithgow for a huge showdown with Zig Zag heading into the general bye for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.

Aside from a blemish against Lithgow Panthers, the two blues have answered most of their challenges in the last month, highlighted by a gutsy win over premiers St Pat’s.

They sit third, but are only ahead of Orange Wanderers and Zig Zag on for-and-against.

Today they can start to put a bit of distance between themselves and the other two, particularly if Pat’s do them a favour and beat Wanderers.

Zig Zag showed that they were a team to be taken seriously in May when they split the points with St Pat’s and the general consensus seems to be that they are the dark horses of the competition.

“This is probably one of the most important games we’re going to play all season,” Souths coach Ray Winwood-Smith said. “Some of the teams in similar positions on the table are starting to play one another and they should start to separate a little bit in the next few rounds.

“I’ve said throughout the competition that Zig Zag are a team with a lot of credibility and on their home turf they will be incredibly tough to beat.”

The last time these two sides met was in round one, where Zig Zag secured a 3-1 win though in their defence, Souths were playing their first match under Winwood-Smith and dealing with a number of positional changes.

Of late with the exception of the Panthers loss, they have been able to hold their opponents at arm’s length and dictate terms through most of their matches.

There is only one thing left for them to do to tick all the boxes.

“We have been controlling games really well, the speed of them and how they are played and we’ve really adapted to the structures we’ve been trying to work on,” the coach said.

“We are making chances in the attacking circle, the challenge now is to convert them so we’re not putting ourselves under pressure at the back end of games.

“I’m confident that there will be a game where we genuinely turn a corner in that area, hopefully this weekend will provide it. We have a full squad available for the first time all season, so the idea is that we go to Lithgow, roll a few dice and see what we can come up with against a strong opponent.”

Souths play Zig Zag from 1.30pm.