THE Cowra Eagles proved that size does matter in their 2015 Central West Rugby Union season opener on Saturday, a dominant forward pack laying the foundation of their 28-13 victory over CSU.

While a CSU side featuring six debutants made a solid start on their home turf at University Oval to lead 8-0, as soon as the Eagles were able to get the ball to their forwards they strung together phase after phase.

Even when the visitors spread the ball to their back line there was a clear size disparity, inside centre Jeremy Montgomery bigger than most members of the CSU pack.

It meant Cowra in the main played pick and drive rugby, but their simply tactics were effective and deprived CSU of possession.

“Size did matter, absolutely. That was something we focused on in the pre-season, making sure we get a bit of dominance up front,” Eagles coach Dave Oliver said.

“Just a very simply game plan did it for us. We had a good pre-season, two very good trials at home, and we have got to go on with it now, the building blocks are there for us to move forward.

“We’ve got quite a bit of talent to come into our back line as well, we sort of had the perfect storm with injuries and players out, but round one, we just kept it nice and simple.”

A penalty goal inside the first three minutes, then a try to fleet-footed fullback James Tooth had the students on top early, their speed and agility in the back line serving them well.

But as the game went on their backs simply did not get enough ball to challenge Cowra.

The Eagles opened their account in the 17th minute after their forwards pilfered the ball on halfway and counter-attacked. Flyhalf Bill Cummins was the man who benefited, with Aaron Denzel adding the extras to make it 8-7.

Five minutes later Cowra had the lead when a strong push from their forwards set things up for their back line, Tom Brooks taking advantage of an overlap to score down the left wing.

CSU did have a chance to respond shortly before half-time when Cameron Backhouse found space out wide, but Anthony Yeo came across to apply the covering tackle. The flyhalf was dragged down some 15 metres short of the line.

Cowra went into the half-time break leading 14-8 and when play resumed they worked hard at extending that advantage.

To the students’ credit they held out for a number of phases and were able to shut down a dangerous looking rolling maul, but the Eagles’ weight of possession finally told.

Number 8 Jan Hoogland scored from a scrum pushover before lock Chris Miller got between three CSU defenders to score a fourth Cowra try.

Though the students did pick up a consolation try through skipper Blake Ridges, they got inside Cowra’s 22 just three times in the second half.

“Size hurt us today, but we tried to work around it, we tried not to use it as an excuse. We needed to use the ball wider, but we just couldn’t do that today unfortunately,” Ridges said.

“We defended very well, we worked hard on that at training and that paid off for us at times today. 

“We started the game well, we just didn’t finish it off and it’s an 80 minute game, so we have to do that.”

COWRA EAGLES 28 (Bill Cummins, Tom Brooks, Jan Hoogland, Chris Miller tries; Aaron Denzel 4 conversions) def CSU Bathurst 13 (James Tooth, Blake Ridges tries; Pat Hill penalty)