The students couldn’t back up from their first-up thrashing of college rivals Robb, going down to the defending champions 15-11 after leading 6-5 at half-time.

The root of the loss was too many turnovers.

Particularly in the second half they would have rarely gone past five phases, either losing the ball in contact or from that final pass not sticking.

It really stifled their ability to build any momentum and put pressure on the Blues.

They were missing some big guns, such as Ollie Bartlett who was their best against Robb, and didn’t help themselves with their discipline either, skipper Alex Pay said.

“We gave away too many penalties and piggy-backed them down the field,” he said.

Defensively they were also a bit sloppy around the rucks at times.

They did have to do a lot of defending, Pay said, and it did drain them.

The positive was the effort.

“We never lost hope,” Pay said.

“Everyone worked hard all day.”

It was also good to see a few freshers step up.

They had three making their debuts on Saturday – Harry Wardle, tryscorer Tom Fischer and Sam Knight.

Wardle ended up snaring the two points behind Ben Carmichael with prop Pete Brooker picking up the one.

Blues coach Luke Stephen pointed to the way they played for each other as being the key to the win.

“That was seen through the defensive effort,” he said.

They only conceded one try and that was really down to the bounce of the ball and a bit of a mix-up in communication.

Other than that they didn’t really give the students an inch, the defensive pressure they asserted forcing them into mistakes.

“I was confident in our ability to create pressure and limit their opportunities,” Stephen said.

It was one of the things they did well against them last season and, knowing the threat the Albies backs posed, defence was a big focus.

“We knew the danger Albies had out wide. We knew we had to win the collision and swarm and make them play back to where our forwards were,” Stephen said.

Having a lot of new faces, Stephen knows it will take time to develop the chemistry in attack.

Despite that, they  had the better of the attacking opportunities, he felt.

And there were some promising signs in their attack.

Their ability to keep the ball in play was a real feature.

They threw some nice second phase pop balls to the likes of Roberts and Dan Ah-See in support.

Against a broken defence they are in their element.

Roberts was instrumental in the win, scoring the try that gave them the lead in the second half and proving a handful all day.

Stephen though couldn’t go past breakaway Riley Hopwood as their best for the second week in a row.

It was “daylight second” to the next best.