Kildare Catholic College sounded an ominous warning the rest of the Hardy Shield competition with an opening round demolition on Monday.
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Kildare thrashed reigning champions Wagga High School 32-4 at Parramore Park, while The Riverina Anglican College (TRAC) recorded a 20-14 victory over Kooringal High School earlier.
It was Kildare's performance that got the schoolboy competition talking as they produced a dynamic effort to start the tournament.
Kildare ran in three tries in the opening 15 minutes to put Wagga High on the back foot.
Another three tries in the space of the eight minutes in the second half put the result beyond doubt.
Kildare co-coach Matthew Conn was rapt with the first-up performance.
"We've been working on that for a few weeks now, you never know what it's going to look like until you get out there and it was what they put in on the training paddock," Conn said.
"We've been working hard for that and it's good to put in a performance like that against a quality side, who will bounce back, but that's the right way we wanted to start and send a message to the competition.
"We might have a bit of a target on our backs but I don't mind a target on our backs. Let them come and get us."
On the back of a big performance from their pack, Kildare halves Sam Macklan and Braith Crane were able to feed their outside backs with some quality ball.
Conn thought it was the complete performance.
"I thought we dominated the ruck. Our defence was outstanding, we had numbers in tackles, they were hungry in attack off the back of our quick play the balls, it just laid the platform," he said.
"We'd been working towards that and they worked really hard for it. That game of footy is done and we'll look to Wednesday night now, which will be a different contest again against a big Mater Dei forward pack."
Meantime, some individual brilliance from star athlete Godfrey Okerenyang helped TRAC to an impressive victory.
A 90-metre individual try from Okerenyang was the highlight as TRAC edged ahead early, and then were forced to come from behind to get the win.
TRAC coach Michael Stubbs was proud of his team.
"A great way to start," Stubbs said.
"They fell in a hole for a little bit, we thought it might get ugly but they showed good discipline.
"The plain facts were we don't have one rugby league player in the team...so just to bring them together, year 10s, year 12s, they didn't get hurt and they got to play rugby league, which is good."
Campbell Simpson and Mack Hamilton also played good games for TRAC, while Harry Byrnes scored a match-winning double late in the game.
David Oti, Will Roworth and Riley Norton-Fraser were best for Kooringal.
Full-time
KILDARE CATHOLIC COLLEGE 32 (N Cooper 2, B Hay, W McDermott, R McInerney, P Voss tries; B Crane 3, S Macklan goals) d WAGGA HIGH SCHOOL 4 (C Bassett try).
THE RIVERINA ANGLICAN COLLEGE 20 (G Okerenyang 2, H Byrnes 2 tries; H Byrnes, C Simpson goals) d KOORINGAL HIGH SCHOOL 14 (L Armstrong, H Post, W Roworth tries; D Oti goal).
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