Last year’s NRMA Colts Shield triumph has seen the Lions promoted to the Rowlands Cup, where, along with first-up opponents Central Coast, they’ll be competing against Central North.

The two northern sides played at Gunnedah on Sunday in what was, for the Lions, their first game together.

They took the honours after scoring two tries in the last quarter of the game.

“The pleasing thing for us was that we did get better as the match went on and seemed to play with more structure,” Charter said.

At the start they were still trying to get their combinations working.

“The first half an hour was us trying to find our feet,” he said.

“The back end of the game we started to click and played the sort of style we want to take through to the championships.”

They didn’t have all the squad on deck on Sunday but look like having a strong forward pack.

“We’ve kept five  out of the starting eight from last year,” Charter said.

“A couple of those went on to play Country.”

The new faces, such as Narrabri’s Sam Knight, have only complemented what they’ve already got.

“In the backs we’ve got a fairly significant changing of the guard,” he said.

That said, they are pretty lucky.

Through the two college sides particularly, they’ve got a pretty deep pool of talent to tap into.

“The big thing for us is getting through this weekend,” Charter said.

The same goes for the Kookaburras.

They’ve already lost Dylan Lewis after he was injured in Inverell’s game against Tamworth on Saturday.

They were again a bit light-on for numbers on Sunday and subsequently ran out of a bit of steam but there was some good stuff before that.

“We defended really well,” co-coach Garry Walsh said.

As they had before their trial against Pirates the previous week, they had a run before the game.

That session was all about structure and shape, and execution in attack.

On Sunday the focus was defence  and they really set out to work on their line speed.

“Some of our structure in attack was nice but it still was not where it needs to be,” Walsh said.

“We built some good phases and scored some good tries.”

They’ll have another chance to work on things at Barraba on Sunday morning and Walsh is hoping they’ll finally get the whole squad together.

He thought Angus McTavish played well at five-eighth and Harrison Pettit also went well.

Walsh was also impressed with new Walcha recruit Sione Kamato.

“He looked very good,” he said.

He’ll be a welcome addition if they can snare him, with the breakaway also trialling with the opens squad.