RUGBY LEAGUE: The Queanbeyan Blues have started their campaign the best way possible with a 34 to 12 round one win over Gungahlin at Seiffert Oval on Friday night.
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It took less than a minute for the home team to wow the crowd with an early try from Jake Wheeler and conversion from Craig Wilkinson.
The Bulls went into the second minute of the match already down 6 to 0 and it did not take long for things to go from bad to worse for the visitors.
Play was halted for a Gungahlin injury and Wheeler scored his second try just 10 minutes into the match.
Gungahlin finally stepped into gear, scoring a try and conversion to bring the score to 12 to 6 at the 25-minute mark.
The Blues went into halftime 18 to 6 and was sitting comfortably.
Queanbeyan held the ball in their half for a good majority of the game and the home side looked to be in control.
The only time Gungahlin looked to worry the Blues was after Tom Ruediger was sent to the sin bin and the Bulls were able to score while the home side were a man down.
Gungahlin's try and conversion brought the score back to 10-points the difference and gave the Bulls hope of a comeback with 30 minutes still on the clock.
But a couple of tries late in the half from Tom Ruediger and Scott Kalsbeek well and truly sealed the win for the Blues by 22 points.
Blues coach Simon Woolford said there was not much he could fault in the match.
"I thought it was pretty good for a first performance- for this time of year it was pretty good," he said.
"We set ourselves goals in the first couple of weeks, to do with completion and handling errors and (key performance indicators), and we achieved four of our five goals.
"We were on the wrong end of the penalty count and we're not going to win games normally if we're giving away too many penalties.
"But last year we had an average of three tries scored against us and we want to go even better than that this year- which we did (against Gungahlin).
Jake Wheeler's hatrick was good for the Blues, as was performances from Jamal Nchouki (1 try) and captain Marc Herbert, Woolford said.
"But we didn't have a bad performer, we try not to rely on anyone," he said.
The Blues tackle Woden Valley at Phillip on Sunday and Woolford said the Rams have improved and he will not go into into the match overconfident.
"(Woden Valley) have a number of good individuals and it's always different to play against them at Phillip," he said.
"We'll just concentrate on achieving our goals and hopefully we can get a similar result."
