The Canberra Raiders SG Ball and Harold Matthews sides both had commanding wins on the weekend.
SG Ball
Canberra 42 (A Niko 2, S Kris 2, D Spencer, S Ketia-Opo, J Bastick tries; Ketia-Opo 5, S Finnegan 2 goals) def Perth 8 (S Faafua, P Porter tries)
Showing no signs of fatigue after the long travel to Perth, the Raiders SG Ball side continued its perfect start to 2016 with a strong victory over Perth.
Coach Dean Souter was happy with the performance, but admitted the side still had plenty of room for improvement.
"The key message for the game was to start well and not give them the jump on us. The team managed to execute the game plan well with some very solid defence backed up with some good play around tired defenders. The score line at half time resembled a side focused on the job at hand," Souter said.
"The second half however was a different case, far too many errors and poor options. The goal going forward is to continue to try and put it all together for the full 70 minutes. The team met their defensive goal of keeping the opponents to under 12 points. If we can continue to stay strong defensively we will be in good shape later in the season."
Harold Matthews
Canberra 62 (J Church 2, T Chatfield 2, H Smith-Shields 2, J Roberts 2, K Tanesi, T Peters, T Brooke tries; K Jensen 9 goals) def SWSAS 0
Harold Matthews notched their first win of the year, after being held to a 12 all draw last weekend.
Coach Adam Kyle couldn't have been happier with the performance of his team.
"We went into this match really confident after our round one draw, and knew that if we fixed our errors we would be a lot more competitive. We worked really hard last week on playing what’s in front of us and staying composed. This reflected really well in the game against SWAS as our error count was really low," Kyle said.
"I think the lads started to realise that we don’t need to score on ever set we attack, at this level it’s about building pressure and forcing your opponent into mistakes.
"More than the points we scored I was really happy to walk away without conceding any points. Our defence at stages of the game was excellent we kept pushing hard for each other to make sure we kept SWAS scoreless."
Round Three
Harold Matthews: Manly Sea Eagles v Canberra Raiders, Brookvale Oval, Saturday 27th February 12.30pm
SG Ball: Manly Sea Eagles v Canberra Raiders, Brookvale Oval, Saturday 27th February 2.00pm
