Blacks co-coach Mick Hickling said it had been an extremely hard decision for McCormack to leave but in the end he decided employment opportunities offered by Wanderers would enable to secure his future best.

“We tried extremely hard to keep Josh and had found him employment opportunities, but he decided the move to Wanderers was in his best interest,” Hickling said at the Blacks’ first pre-season training night on Wednesday.

“He had a great season for us last year, these things happens and like the boys said at training work commitments have to take priority.”

Hickling said the loss of McCormack, whose brother Ryan is senior co-coach, was a blow but he felt the Blacks had a squad to make the finals this year, after narrowly missing last year’s play-offs in first grade.

“After the way we started and even in patches through the year I felt confident we were going to make the semi-finals last year,” Hickling said.

“I’d like to think we learnt a lot from last year and when we come up against those better teams we will better prepared. We have a core group of players who have a much better understanding of what’s required against those teams.”

Decision making under pressure will be one of the key issues addressed.

“In certain aspects of the games we will try to simplify things when we play those better teams, particularly earlier in the game,” Hickling said.

“We need to work on some basic structures, not push passes, drop balls and improve our discipline as we gave away too many penalties.

“When you get tired and you play against good teams your decision making is not what it is when things are flowing, when you are on top.

We want to get the players used to being uncomfortable but being able to deal with it.  We want them to say ‘yes I’m fatigued,  but I’m going to cope, I’m going to deal with this fatigue and cope in the game’.”

The club is in discussions with a couple of potential recruits but will develop from within.

“We’ve got the core group of blokes. Hopefully we can pick up a couple of blokes to strengthen areas,” Hickling said.

“Our forward pack will have young players who have had another season of physically hardening up.

“Young blokes like Theo Risley and Rhys Watson, they are in their early 20s but have had another season of hard footy. That’s good for you, it hardens the body.”