Bathurst Panthers’ concerted bid to build a team that can press for a Group 10 premier league title officially begins tomorrow when they head to Orange to face Hawks at Wade Park.

The men in black were well below par last season, following a strong 2014 campaign with an effort that never really got off the ground.

They got on the front foot in the off-season and picked up a number of strong recruits and a handful of them get their chance to show what they can do immediately against another side who were underwhelming last year.

Jye Barrow, Claude Gordon, Kyle Byrnes and Leigh Monaghan will all make their premiership debut for Panthers, while Mitch Davis makes a return to the club on the wing having sat out 2015.

On the team sheet at least, it looks like a powerful unit, powerful enough that representative prop Greg Behan has been pushed to the bench with Jed Betts to partner Brent Seager in the front-row.

“We know that we have to be better than what we were in a pretty ordinary 2015 season,” manager Danny Dwyer said.

“We have had a good pre-season, we played well at the Mudgee Nines, we took that form into the Bathurst Panthers Knockout and won that, so if we can transfer some of that form into the longer game I’m confident we can get good results.”

Player-coach Todd Barrow was a player who missed plenty of football with injury last season but he will start at five-eighth tomorrow, partnering Claude Gordon in the halves while Jeremy Gordon goes to fullback.

With Blake Lawson and Jye Barrow in the centres, and Davis and Bradyn Cassidy on the wings, it is a backline with a lot of points in it.

Dwyer says he wants to see them play accordingly.

“I think we showed at the Knockout that we can play a very open style of footy,” he said.

“Our attack should be a real strength. One of the other things that was pretty clear in those pre-season games, too, was that the players look closer as a group, it looks like they’ve formed a pretty strong friendship as a group and that’s a good sign.”

Hawks were without a coach for much of their pre-season but eventually settled with Jason Gangaram, and they have picked up a number of handy signings including Max Wolfson, a former Hawk who spent last season with Panthers.

“We saw them at the Mudgee Nines, they were a very enthusiastic side and obviously quite young and it looked like they carried that enthusiasm to the Knockout,” Dwyer said. “They’ll be looking to make a bit of a point early in the season and translate that energetic football into the main competition. They will be dangerous and we’ll need to play well to beat them.”

Panthers and Hawks do battle from 2pm tomorrow afternoon.

BATHURST PANTHERS: 1 Jeremy Gordon, 2 Mitch Davis, 3 Blake Lawson, 4 Jye Barrow, 5 Bradyn Cassidy, 6 Todd Barrow, 7 Claude Gordon, 8 Brent Seager, 9 Nick Loader, 10 Greg Behan, 11 Leigh Monaghan, 12 Kyle Byrnes, 13 Jake Betts, 14 Ben Gunn, 15 Jay McClintock, 16 Jarrod Seager, 17 Jed Betts