Canberra have stood down a quintet of stars for disciplinary reasons after the five players - from a squad of 12 - broke their curfew at the Gold Coast leg of the University Sevens series a fortnight ago.

Paremo Marsh, Ngawai Eyles, Regan Hart, Tayla Stanford and Jess Howard have been stood down while Breanna Toze will miss the final leg of the series in Adelaide through injury this weekend.

Sammie Wood, Kiara Meredith-Brown, Darcy Read, Georgia O'Neill and Ema Masi return to the side whilst Skye Churchill has been called upon to make her debut.

Canberra coach David Grimmond backed the university's stand and says the incoming players have a massive opportunity to leave him with a reminder of what they are capable of ahead of the 2019 series.

"We’ve had a bit of a shake-up, we had to stand five girls down for curfew reasons that weren’t met when we were on the Gold Coast two weeks back unfortunately," Grimmond said.

"I don’t want to harp on that too much but the university had to take a stand. We’ve got five new faces coming in which can be a little bit hard, but also it’s a good opportunity for those in the squad of 24 to get an opportunity to play and show what they can do.

"Long and short of it is, we’ve got a good core group still there. Up front, forward-wise, we’ve got some physical players. Georgia O’Neill, who is with the Wallaroos, is ready to go and she’ll get more minutes this weekend."

Canberra have slipped to fifth on the overall table and they have been lumped into a pool featuring Griffith University, Bond University, University of Queensland and the University of New England.

Two of those sides sit above Canberra on the table to present Grimmond's side with a huge chance to make a statement to close out the series.

"The past two weeks the girls have really focused on building a good team morale, and we have done that well," Wood said.

"They’re really excited to get out and have a go, especially with the last round. Grimmo, Liam and the boys have made it really fun at training and we’re all ready to go.

"It’s a totally different competition now for all teams, last year it was really dominated by certain teams but this year it has been up and down. There’s been upsets and good moments.

"As a team for us, I think it has grown massively from last year. We were able to take what we learnt from last year and take it into this year.

"Having two weeks in between each tournament have allowed that recovery, and if we needed to bring other players up we were able to keep them up to date with what has happened in the last one."