Riverina League representative Dusty Rogers, key forward Jeff Ladd, Holbrook's Lachie Holmes and Deniliquin's John Bowie will all step out for the Bushpigs for the first time at Peter Hastie Oval on Saturday.

Second-year CSU coach Travis Cohalan is excited to see what the recruits bring to the table for the Bushpigs.

"One hundred per cent. It's one thing to see them in match practice, match sim at training and intra-clubs and trials but it's a completely different thing to see them in the heat of battle in round one against an opponent from your own league so we're really excited to see that," Cohalan said.

Only Connor Kelly, who is out for four to six weeks with a knee injury, will be missing from the Bushpigs' full-strength team.

CSU upstaged a highly-fancied Coleambally team in Coleambally in last year's round one fixture.

They head into this year's clash on the back of some solid showings against Riverina League clubs Turvey Park and Mangoplah-Cookardinia United-Eastlakes in trial games.

Cohalan said those two hit-outs provide confidence heading into Saturday.

"I thought so. We played two teams I expect to be in the finals in the RFL, or close to the finals in the RFL. In terms of the Riverina, they're probably the benchmark of football around here, those types of teams," he said.

"I think the boys equipped themselves really well and were able to match it with those two teams, Turvey and Mango, for long periods of the game.

"In the end, probably some structure, game plan, fitness, skills showed out, and you'd expect that because the RFL is the better league, the premier league, in the region for a reason but I thought our boys stuck to the task really well and learnt a lot from playing against high quality opponents and hopefully that will hold us in good stead for the year."

The return to somewhat normal life on campus is only set to be benefit the Bushpigs after a couple of years ravaged by COVID.

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Cohalan expects the university's return to day-to-day life will help provide his team with more depth this year.

"We worked really hard last year, I think we had to turnover something like 18 players from 2020 to 2021 in terms of first grade players, or maybe it was even more than that," he said.

"We've worked hard to recruit Wagga-based players separate from the uni so we've got a core base that have been able to train with 16, 18, 20 odd players minimum from November through to January until reinforcements arrive from uni, when the students come back.

"I think it's definitely going to help with our depth this year to have the campus life back to being pretty much normal and the students there that are keen to play footy, whatever grade that may be.

"We're just really excited that footy's back. We had 50-something players at training (Tuesday) night, which is great.

"Everything's sort of opening back up again and getting back to something like 'normal', footy, community and sporting-wise, out at the uni so to have the numbers turning up like that a week out from round one, we're really excited about what's ahead."

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