IN the eyes of Jed Betts this year's Presidents Cup journey has been a challenging but rewarding affair, especially considering the lack of preparation his Western Rams teammates had before taking on their experienced opponents.
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The Bathurst Panthers utility and the win-less Rams go into this Sunday's last clash of the year against the Glebe Burwood Wolves, chasing what would be a big upset.
Betts comes off the bench in an unchanged Rams lineup that, despite a season of disappointments, have a bit of spark going into the upcoming game at Henson Park.
That comes mostly off the back of last Sunday's solid outing against a classy North Sydney Bears outfit at Carrington Park.
The Rams lost 42-26 but made Jason Taylor's Bears earn their win as the hosts made a big fourth quarter surge. That free flowing football in attack is what the Rams will be chasing more of.
"I thought in the last couple of rounds I thought we were going to click a little better, but you can tell with a couple of games under our belts that we've improved a bit," Betts said.
"It's been hard on fitness too. When all the comps shut down everyone thought it was done so the pre-season fitness wasn't there, and that made things very difficult."
Seven straight defeats can get to a team but Rams are keeping their heads high ahead of what's expected to be another tough clash.
Rams are out to play the spoiler role in the game at Marrickville, chasing the strong glimpses they showed against the Bears and earlier in the season against Thirroul.
Betts said the Rams have so far put up as strong a fight as they could have hoped for given the tough build up they had to the season.
"It's been a good experience but it's been hard without a full team. There's a lot of players who could have been there who had other commitments," he said.
"It's difficult with training too. All the other teams in the comp could have got together two to three times a week for training whereas we're struggling to get together once a week, and that's showing on the field.
"It was late notice getting the team together, probably three weeks notice before the first game. We've been playing it by ear and just picking things up as we go.
"We don't know a great deal about [Wolves], only that they'll be tough. We'll go out there with nothing to lose, trying to prove a point and make a decent finish to the end of the season."
There are two rounds of the regular season still to play but Rams will sit the last weekend out with the bye.
Kick-off is 2pm.
- WESTERN RAMS: 1 Mitch Andrews, 2 Keelan Bresac, 3 Jackson Brien, 4 Brock Naden, 5 Jesse Wighton, 6 Willie Heta, 7 Harry Siejka (c), 8 Brad Fearnley, 9 Brendan Hands, 25 Zac Merritt, 11 Bailey Hartwig, 12 Alex Ronayne, 13 Jake Betts, 14 Jack Beasley, 15 Cody Godden, 16 Jed Betts, 17 Liam Henry, 18 Nick Tillburg