Looking at the final scoreline you could be excused for thinking the defending champions were relatively untroubled, but that was far from the case.

The Red Devils took it right to them and were well in the game until midway through the second half.

But like the Crusaders did against the Melbourne Rebels the previous night, Pirates blew the Red Devils away in the last 20 minutes.

“It’s hard to be happy with a big loss like that,” Waerea conceded.

“(But) I’m pretty happy with everything.”

“The first 50 minutes of that game that’s the strongest football I’ve seen the Red Devils play.”

The scrum was “unreal” until they lost prop Matt Pardesi to a blue card, they competed well at the ruck, and defensively really got up in Pirates faces and denied them time and space.

The Red Devils came out firing and enjoyed all the early pressure. But while the endeavour was there the execution wasn’t quite and instead it was Pirates that were first to score.

With virtually his first touch, replacement winger Nathaniel Tavaga got on the outside of his man from a 5m scrum play to get the Red Devils on the board. A try to prop Ben Goodman in the shades of half-time, gave the home side a somewhat fortuitous 14-5 lead at the break, with the Red Devils outenthusing them.

Pirates extended their lead early in the second half but the Red Devils hit back through Tavaga, the winger juggling the ball a couple of times but managing to hold onto it after some crisp hands through the backs.

But from there the momentum was with Pirates, a penalty try after they had almost marched over twice from a scrum, sparking a flurry of points. 

Waerea described the Red Devils’ first half as “just strong, not flashy” but lamented that they were unable to turn their early possession into points.

“A couple of times down there we got a bit separated on some of those hit-ups.

“They are very good over the ball, you can’t afford to get isolated,” he said.

Losing Pardesi was a big blow. That was when Waerea really felt the game started to turn, with the Red Devils losing a bit of traction in their scrum.

“We’re aligning everything to our set piece,” he said.

Unfortunately the lineout didn’t function as well as they would have hoped either.

“They were very offensive in the lineout, which disrupted us,” Waerea said.

The Red Devils did have a completely new second row with both Matt Roseby and Tom Torrens out with injury.

Waerea thought Matt Neilson and Kurtys Bont stepping in did a good job, describing the latter as a find.

Originally from Clermont Bont has moved to Boggabri for work. Nick Lyons also had an awesome game, while Waerea “couldn’t fault” the work of Jamie Mitchell and Jono Madden in defence in the midfield.