Mornington skipper Rhyce Kliendienst achieved not one, but two firsts on Saturday as Mornington hammered Kookaburras to make it three from three.
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The allrounder claimed his first-ever hat-trick en route to his maiden five-wicket haul in Gunnedah.
Coming on at first change and with Kookaburras already in trouble thanks to Mitch Foster (2-11) and Nick Millar (1-17), Kliendienst tore through the middle and lower order to finish with 5-5 as they routed a 10m-man Kookas for just 39.
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His best bowling performance for the club he said he was "just trying to bowl at the stumps and nice and full", and reflected on his hat-trick as "the luck of the draw and three good balls, and three balls that asked questions.
Mornington then took just 5.2 overs to chase down the runs, Tim McDermott (14no) and Henry Johns (8no) finishing off the job Kliendienst and co had started with the ball.
As nice as the individual success was, for Kliendienst the most pleasing part was the team's success.
While still only early days, Mornington have been the feelgood story of the season.
"It's a lot different to last year," he remarked. "This time last year we were none from four or five games."
And, as he added "didn't look like winning them". But as the season went on they became more competitive, and towards the end there were a few games where they "weren't far off the mark" before eventually posting their first win in the final round.
In the other game, Blake Small continued what has been his best start to a season for some time with 54 as Court House accounted for Albion.
It was the keeper-batsmen's first club half-century since scoring 74 against Mornington back in November of the 2017/18 season.
"I've been feeling really good for the start of the season," Small said.
Feeling rejuvinated after taking a bit of break from sport over the winter, he has even "been going to training a little bit too".
"It's good to be back out there and even better that I'm actually scoring runs and helping the team out," he said.
"I pretty much said to one of my mates I'm seeing the ball pretty well I think I'm actually going to score a few runs this season."
The bowlers then did their job, rolling Albion for around 50 for a "strong win"..
It was a fruitful weekend for Small, backing up on Sunday to lead the district side to a 102-run win over Quirindi in their Connolly Cup opener.
He was a big contributor to the victory, hitting a second-top 37 and sharing a 72-run stand with Matt Agostino for the third wicket, which set the foundation for them to post 196.
