Travelling away, Bathurst will look to out-muscle their hometown opponents from the very first match-up of the day – tennis.

The Bathurst team of Darcy Davis, Brad Nancarrow, Mikey Stanford, Chris Cady, Danica Daymond, Jane Hanrahan, Caitlin Davis and Felicity King will play 16 sets of doubles to determine a winner.

Bathurst High tennis coach Geoff Tindall said his side would be out to inflict the maximum amount of punishment on Orange.

“Certainly our girls should be very strong particularly after they picked up the Western Region Championships last Friday when they defeated Dubbo Senior College,” he said.

“Dubbo beat Orange 16-0, so we think we’ll be going out to try and do something similar.

“Our boys’ team has probably got a bit of work to do but off the strength of our girls we should do pretty well.”

For 85 years Bathurst, Orange and Dubbo has battled it out for the Astley Cup competing across the sports of tennis, hockey, football, rugby league, athletics, basketball and netball, as well as debating.

Tindall said it was vital the tennis team started strongly today in order to give Bathurst momentum in the hockey and football.

“We will want to stamp our authority on Orange,” he said.

“It is important that we perform well so that the other sports have something to build on.

“In the past few years we’ve performed well against Orange but struggled against Dubbo. Hopefully, this year that will change though.”

Already Dubbo have showed they will again be a force in the competition beating Orange High by 134 points in their opening clash of the 2010 Astley Cup.

Although they were expected to go down heavily against the defending champions in Dubbo, Orange showed they had some fire.

After leading both the boys’ and girls’ football games Orange were unlucky not to receive more points following two late equalisers from Dubbo, resulting on the points being split 50-50 in both grades.

The bigger and stronger Dubbo outfit was never in trouble as they crushed Orange High 92-2 in the rugby league to take the tie 466-332 overall after Dubbo had taken a 220-180 lead into day two.

Looking at the scoreboard, Tindall said his players needed to fight for every point and every set.

“The focus for our players will be to play as a team and scrap for every point,” he said.

“When it comes to winning the trophy it can come down to a matter of just a few points so it is important to scrap for every single point.”