He couldn’t have timed it any better.

Panthers will travel this Sunday to take on Oberon Tigers in what will be the match of the round between second and third on the ladder.

Dynamic Panthers centre Lawson will be a welcome addition to the Panthers who will take on a Tigers team well rested from last round’s bye.

”He was one of the form centres last year,” Panthers manager Danny Dwyer said of Lawson.

“Kyle Byrnes did an amazing job filling in for him at centre but now he gets to move back to his more natural position in the second row.

“Blake’s a tough competitor. He’s great in the air and you know there’s always going to be a line break or two in him. He’ll probably be a little underdone for this game but it will be great to have him out there again.”

Panthers and Tigers meet with wildly different results under their belts.

A four-try blitz from Kade Barrow lifted Panthers to a 56-26 victory over Mudgee Dragons while Tigers became another victim of a rampant, unbeaten Orange CYMS side 50-12.

Regardless of the previous results Dwyer said the Bathurst men can expect a fired up Tigers team when they play for a home crowd.

“The records show that Oberon are a great threat at home and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a few players back after the week off,” he said.

“They’ve had two weeks to regroup and we had a very tough game against last year over there. Based on their form prior to the CYMS game it’s going to be a hard match.

“I think the 26 point scored against us last week is disappointing. We’ve had rock solid defence for most of the season. We got opened up in the middle a couple of times and that’s something that hasn’t happened to us much this year.

“We got a couple of early tries to go to 10-nil but in those first 15 minutes we failed a few completions.”

Panthers look to turn around last year’s result at the Oberon Sports Ground where the Tigers came away 16-14 winners.

Match start is 2.15pm.