Gunnedah women's coach Matt Hannay says Saturday's win over Pirates has given them the belief that they are serious contenders in this year's competition.
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The 26-22 win wasn't their biggest in terms of scoreline but was by other measures with the defending champions looking every bit the team to beat again.
"I think it was pretty special in the fact that we've got a lot of young players there who were probably very nervous and probably didn't have the confidence to think they could do what they did or to really believe that they could be contenders in the competition," Hannay said.
"I think that's alleviated a lot of that doubt."
They had to fight hard for the win. There was nothing in it, goal kicking proving the difference in the end with both sides scoring four tries a-piece.
One of the things that most impressed Hannay was the Red Devils' attitude.
"After Pirates scored on us in the first couple of minutes not one person put their head down and said 'oh, here we go, we're gonna get bashed'," he said.
"They all just got up and went back and took it straight to them."
That was for him the "sliding doors moment" and really set the tone for the rest of the game.
Before Saturday having scored more than 70 points in all but one of their games, Hannay knew Pirates would be "an extremely well-drilled attacking team", and so devised a more forward structured game plan and tweaked the Red Devils' defensive pattern a bit to try and counter that.
"We structured our defence slightly differently through the week and did some different drills to change our defence, and then worked out that we could probably move the ball, when we had it, up the middle of the field a lot before going wide, and suck their players in," he said.
They executed the plan "almost perfectly".
Describing them as "a blank canvas" when he took on the coaching role for this season, he said the result is representative of the side's growth.
While they do have a few "senior" players that have been part of the side for a little while such as Sarah Stewart, Peta Lawrence, Kate O'Donnell and Lana Bottrell, they also have a lot that are "pretty green" with this season being either their first or second.
They now have two weeks off with the bye this weekend and then the long weekend, before finishing the first round against current competition leaders Narrabri.
The Blue Boars also had a good win on Saturday thumping Inverell 83-nil, while in the other game Scone beat Quirindi 36-24 to pick up their first win of the season.
