The Warriors finished second bottom last year with just two wins from 18 games, and will field a virtually unrecognisable side in 2020.

Adrian Jones (Tolland), Mitchell Sauer (Henwood Park) and Liam Thomas have joined the ranks, with Caellan Gray and Clayton Gunning tipped to headline a strong number of junior talents given a chance in seniors.

"Ultimately I'm a new coach to the club and there's new players. This season is all about just focusing on club culture and everyone enjoying their time after Covid," Heller said.

"Obviously we still want to be competitive while we're out there, but everyone is keen to get out there and enjoy their soccer, and veryone's pulling together which is nice to see.

"My main focus was making sure the club culture was on track, then the results will follow once everyone's jelled together. The early signs are promising, but the first game's this week."

Heller said he's prepared to be patient and take gradual steps toward lifting the team off the bottom of the table.

"The results will ultimately come over the next few seasons as we continue our rebuild and we'll start focusing on a longer term plan which we're pretty excited about," he said.

"We want to drive ourselves as high up the league as we can get.

"The main focus for myself is to not just build a side that can compete this year, but to build a side that people want to come to and see they can learn and develop in.

"We focus on development more than winning, and if you do that winning becomes a given. We want to give people playing in the local league an avenue to develop and have fun, so come game day they're starting to see their hard work is paying off."

With such a new-look team Heller had organised a number of trial matches, which were scrapped once coronavirus shut down all sport.

However, he feels they'll be ready to go for Sunday's season-opener against Young at Wagga Showgrounds.

"We had a long pre-season planned because I was conscious we'd have a large turnover in personnel," Heller said.

"Our first game was the week of lockdown so we were unable to have any external trial games, which was a shame because we had quite a few booked.

"But we've had a couple of intra games at training, we're relatively ready."

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