After stepping in to fill the gap left by ORC, St Pats have dominated their two games against Centrals and Kinross to be leading Pool A heading into the 2019 half of the season. 

However, Friday’s game will see them come up against their first real challenge in former champions Lithgow Lightning at Wade Park – and skipper Adam Ryan knows it. 

“Definitely, they’ve been to the top, it should be a really good contest,” he said.

And there’s little doubt about that. 

Lithgow have an all-star lineup including Joel Gurney and skipper Ben Sheahan, who Ryan said were the key. 

“We’ll have to try to get them early and we don’t we could be in for a very long night,” he said. 

He’ll also have to try and nab them early without gun all-rounder Ben Parsons, who is heading overseas and will miss the rest of this season. 

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However, he backed the club’s young talent to step up to the plate in the way Nic Broes, Tanbir Singh and Ben Mitchell have to lead the way in the Twenty20 competition. 

Those young guns – who Ryan said have jumped at every opportunity they can to play any and every format – may have a leg up on the Lightning, who have only played the one game for the season, way back on October 19.

Their second game was declared washed out after numerous attempts to reschedule. 

He hoped some intel gained on the Lightning boys would help St Pats stay unbeaten at the top of the table. “We’ve played against Lithgow in the inter-council games and that was a good experience, we got to play against a few of them with the Wranglers and in the Saturday competition,” he said. 

He’s said he’d been pleased to have such a strong entry to the Royal Hotel Cup. 

“We’re definitely happy, we had no expectations going in and no idea what to expect,” he said. 

“We never wanted to make up the numbers, we were all about getting in and playing well but it was also a chance for a lot of the younger guys and second graders to step up. The young guys want to play as much as they can.”

The Royal Hotel Cup game kicks off at 7.00pm at Wade Park.