After a loss to Wagga City last week, Aggies are clinging to a place in the top five.

The Blacks are hot on their tails, only two points behind with four rounds remaining in the Southern Inland season.

With the winner guaranteed to find themselves in the top five by the end of the weekend, Ag College coach Nick McCarthy believes it is time for his team to start firing.

“We probably want to win this one otherwise we are starting to rely on other results,” McCarthy said.

“We are excited for what this weekend brings.”

Griffith went within seconds of defeating third-placed Leeton on Saturday and will come into the clash with plenty of confidence.

Aggies’ task has been made even harder by having to take on the Blacks in Griffith.

However, McCarthy doesn’t believe it will be any different to another game on the road.

“I think every away game is a tough game in this competition at the moment," he said.

“There is not too many easy games on the road so we just have to go down there and nullify their quality players and stick to our really quite simple game plan in order to get the result.”

McCarthy didn’t think the team showed enough patience at it cost them against Wagga City.

The loss saw Aggies slip from fourth to fifth on the ladder

“We threw away some pretty good chances just by getting a bit ahead of ourselves and not holding the structure we needed to,” McCarthy said.

“Wagga City have obviously improved of lot since we played them the first time around and I don’t think we had anywhere near as good a game as first time.”

Ag College will be far from full strength for the important clash.

They’ve had to reshuffle their back line with both playmakers Jeremy Lim and Hamish Pennington unavailable.

Cameron Duffy will move into halfback while Riley Brennan play at five-eighth.

Representative forward Tanian Naude will move to inside centre to cover Brennan. 

“That worked very well for us last year and we look at Griffith as a game where his strength both in carrying and defensively will help us out,” McCarthy said.

Max Woods has also moved to outside centre while Gabe Brown and Rob Wiltshire will also provide plenty of size in the front row while Mike van Diggelen will start at flanker.

The last time the two teams met, the Blacks were on the wrong side of a 99-3 hiding, but McCarthy isn’t taking any notice of the result.

“That was an anomaly,” he said.

“Griffith turned up for barely enough players from one side let alone three so by the time we played them they had played a lot of rugby.”