The Cats suffered their first defeat of their premiership defence in last year's grand final rematch against South Wagga, who easily ran down Wagga City's 6-168.

The Colts have similar issues in a loss to Lake Albert, where an inability to build enough partnerships saw them fall 16 runs short of the 175 needed in their run chase.

"We bowled and fielded really well, it was something we were really pleased with, but with our batting we just threw our wickets away," Colts skipper Keenan Hanigan said.

"Too many of our top order, including myself, threw our wickets away. It's probably a total we should be chasing down and we fell short in the end.

"We've just got to cash in once our batters gets a start. Our batters know that, we have to be better with some of our decision making on the weekend and we can't make the same mistake against a team like the Cats."

With Jon Nicolls anchoring the innings with an unbeaten 91 off 155 balls, Wagga City struggled to provide enough assistance down the other end against South Wagga.

"They took wickets with the new ball and we just didn't take the game on I think. It will be a pretty good learning curve in those situations going forward, to take the game on rather than coast through," captain-coach Josh Thompson said.

"Jon Nicoll did a great job through the middle overs, we just needed someone to bat with him. We had a couple of blokes get starts, but next time one of them has to ramp it up and go on with it.

"I definitely felt we were 40 or 50 runs short, you want to be above 200 runs to defend it because it puts pressure on someone to get a big score.

"It's only early days, it's only the second game so there's still a lot of games to get it right.

Thompson believes Colts will be one of the big improvers this year.

"In previous years they've been building towards something, but they've got the players and they recruited really well with young players this year."

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