Reds coach Ewen McKenzie has rejected suggestions the defending Super Rugby champions will have to drastically alter the way they play in the absence of injured playmaker Quade Cooper.
The mercurial No.10 will miss at least the opening six games of the Reds' title defence after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in the bronze medal playoff against Wales last October.
While Cooper failed to fire for the Wallabies during the Rugby World Cup, he was the dominant player in Super Rugby last season alongside halves partner Will Genia.
But McKenzie insists the Reds are ready to show they are anything but a one-man team in Cooper's absence.
"We used 37 players to get the job done last year so it wasn't like we were relying on one player ... I don't think we have to move away from our philosophy," McKenzie said at the official launch of the 2012 Super Rugby campaign in Sydney on Thursday.
"Sure, we got great value out of Will (Genia) and Quade, they were there every week, but every team knows it's the next guy and the next guy after that, they're the ones that ultimately end up making a difference for you across a season."
"The x-factor doesn't always have to reside in one player ... and we've got some good young guys coming through that back themselves and fancy themselves, so we'll give them the big stage and see what they've got."
"It gives us an element of surprise ... everyone says in the newspaper they're going to go out there and shut down Will and Quade, well Quade's not there and they've got to work out who they're going to shut down now."
McKenzie added when pressed on the challenge of defending their Super Rugby crown: "We have a different mindset, I mean everyone keeps telling us about this business of defending but we're going out there to win the title."
"You've got to win it every year ... you don't get anything for winning it last year, we got experience but that's it but if you don't bring it to bear you've got nothing, so you've got to go out there and win it again and in different circumstances."
"That's our mindset and we're quite positively oriented around that and we won't get bogged down in it."
"We don't want to be underdogs, we've been in that space for a long time and we want to be going out there as a team that everybody expects to win."
Meanwhile, skipper James Horwill sent an ominous warning to the rest of the competition, insisted his young Reds line-up are far from the finished product.
"The group still feels that we've got a lot of improvement left in us, we've done some reviews of what we did last year and the things we did well and the things that we can improve on," Horwill said.
"So we've spent a lot of time working on those little things that we feel we can be much better at and by no means do we feel that we've reached the pinnacle of where we can be."