IT has been a while since a Bathurst Panthers team has hit the ground running like they did in their thumping 53-12 win over Orange Hawks in round one of the Group 10 premier league competition.

There was no better example of exactly why they got off to such a blistering start than dummy-half Nick Loader, who scored four tries in the season opener and starred for the men in black.

Loader was tipped as one to watch right through the pre-season, manager Danny Dwyer particularly effusive in his praise of the young rake during the Mudgee Nines, the Bathurst Panthers Knockout and a series of trials.

That praise wasn’t misplaced, as last Sunday proved.

Tomorrow he will be hoping to back that effort up with a similar performance against Blayney, who won their round one match 28-20 over Cowra.

“I’ve never done that before that I can remember and definitely not in a senior game,” Loader said of his haul.

“The other boys were doing very well at getting themselves into space and I was just the one who was kind of pushing up through the middle and trying to give them support. They were the ones doing all the hard work.

“It was a great feeling among the team afterwards, we’ve felt really tight as a group all through the pre-season, better than anything I’ve seen since I’ve been at Panthers.

“I think we realised that defensively if we are turning up for each other it goes a long way to winning the game, and in that first half hour on Sunday when Hawks were coming at us we were very strong. That was the basis for the win.”

In the absence of Luke Carpenter, who’s playing future remains up in the air due to a cruel run of injuries, the dummy-half role was the most open spot on the Panthers roster at the start of the season.

Loader has ticked all the boxes to make the position his own and his effort against Hawks will lock him in for the foreseeable future.

He said that he felt during the pre-season as though he was starting to physically get to where he needed to be to nail down a starting role in premier league.

But he knows that it counts for nothing if he doesn’t back it up against the Bears tomorrow, a team still riding on emotion after the tragic loss of their playmaker Terry Brown last month. 

Still, Loader gives the impression that he knows exactly what his role is and how to handle it.

“Their crowd will be out in force, they will support them heavily, so it will be good for us as a team to see how we handle being in a pressure situation against one of the better teams in the competition,” he said.

“We’ve had a tough draw handed to us to start the year with five away games, but we have spoken about it and how every win we pick up now will be a bonus come the end of the season when we’ve got a good run of home games.

“Our new players were excellent in round one, Claude Gordon killed it at halfback and it makes my job so much easier having him outside me. I just give it to him and let him go.”

Panthers and Blayney meet from 2pm at King George VI Oval.

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 Jed Betts, 11 Kyle Byrnes, 12 Leigh Monaghan, 13 Jake Betts, 14 Ben Gunn, 15 Greg Behan, 16 Jay McClintock, 17 Jarrod Seager.