Both sides were coming off narrow wins in the New Holland Agriculture Cup. And with the Rhinos winning 12-9 after trailing 9-5 with a minute remaining, round three did not disappoint.

“Very tight!” Rhinos co-captain Brett Austin said.

“We’ve got good defence, as we’ve seen, even though we gave away so many penalties, we still held them out.

“All their points came from goals, penalties … and we just scored on full-time which was very lucky.”

The game opened with end-to-end action, before the Rhinos got on the board after just five minutes.

Star recruit Tyson Fuller found some space out wide and crashed over in the corner.

CSU skipper Jack Keppel capitalised on a penalty just minutes later to put the visitors back within two.

But that’s where the ‘pretty’ rugby ended, giving way instead to penalties galore and frequent stoppages.

Chris Sellings and James Bamblett were sent off for ill discipline, while CSU’s Lachlan Robinson was carded in the second half for a dangerous tackle on first grade debutante Gabe Chapman. It was a sickening hit the young winger was, frankly, lucky to walk away from.

“We kept them out even when we were a man down, but credit to them, they kept us out when they were a man down too,” Austin said.

“They’re usually just slick and fast, but today they were slick, fast and physical, so there’ll be some sore boys, for sure.”

The 5-3 scoreline persisted into the break, as did the penalties.

Keppel kicked home another two goals to send the students into the lead, but is likely to rue the opportunities he missed, including a field goal attempt.

The game seemed all but over when the Rhinos, probing the students’ defence, found Turuva out wide.

He steamed 30 metres down the line and, finding himself one-on-one with the defence, pushed a pass inside to Ronny Turaga who toyed with the Mitchell men as he ran around to ground the ball underneath the black dot.

Turuva finished the job with a successful conversion as the whistle sounded.

“We’ve got a lot to work with and a lot to work on,” Austin said.

“The attack is there but because there were so many penalties, we’re just defending and then we can’t showcase how good we can attack – until the final play of the game when we showed what we can do.”

“Now we’re starting to play rugby!” CSU assistant coach Dominic Huggett said.

“It’s week three and Dubbo Rhinos are going to be near the top of the table – I can see it. And if we continue playing rugby we're definitely going to be up there. It was a great game out there today from both sides.

“They played very well, we were very happy with what they did. We really bonded together and got that gel and started playing rugby which is our main focus. In the past we've just done one-out hits but now we're starting to play rugby.

“A lot of hard hits, a lot of stoppages of time. To be fair it was 30 degrees out there so I'm sure the boys didn't mind that but the game did drag on a while.

“Look, we're looking to play free-flowing games, we're looking to develop on that, working on when the penalties come, we take the runs but there's a lot to take away from it and we're looking forward to the rest of the season.

“Credit to the Dubbo boys, they put out a great performance and we look for to seeing them again.”

DUBBO RHINOS 12 (Tyson Fuller, Ronny Turaga tries, Viliame Turuva conversion) defeated CSU 9 (Jack Keppel 3 goals)