Hawks camped in St Pat's end of the field for the entire 80 minutes and only afforded their Bathurst counterparts four real chances to score, none of which resulted in points, laying on nine tries of their own in a 52-nil shellacking.

Hawks were clinical with ball in hand too, which led to Rakai Tuheke scoring a double and seven others crossing, but the victory was truly born from their phenomenal defensive effort, which Willie Heta highlighted afterward.

"Keeping St Pat's to zero is definitely the best part of that performance for us, we did a bit of work defensively during the week and it paid off, it was attitude in defence that got us such a big win," Hawks' player-coach said.

"I didn't think St Pat's would be the kind of team we'd get that kind of win against but like I said after the Blayney game, which was disappointing even though we won, I'll always take a win and that was a really good one."

Hawks shot out to a 24-nil lead in as many minutes and didn't give St Pat's a sniff in that period. Although the Saints did have a couple of chances late in the half they couldn't convert.

The two blues extended their lead seven minutes into the new half through Eman Rodriguez and then again through Jack Aumuller three minutes later, by then the result was assured with the score at 34-nil.

They didn't take their foot off the gas though, piling on another three four-pointers in the last half hour, with Tuheke adding another on top of his 23^rd minute try while Lawrence Fogg and Tom Blimka scored too.

Post-contact metres are all the rage in the NRL's seemingly-endless search of quantifiable statistics and they had a huge impact on Sunday's result, or rather the quick play-the-balls and momentum they secured.

Plenty of that was through Hawks playing slightly wider through the middles, utilising tip-ons through their pack beautifully to find weak shoulders and as Heta said, preserve their big bodies a bit as well.

"Guys like Sammy Coyte, Ethan McKellar and Nathan Potts, they can be a bit one-dimensional if they're just taking it up and that takes a toll on their bodies too, so we did look to try and take some pressure off them with a few tips," Heta said.

"Whether that be between themselves or to a trailing half or something like that, we wanted to take some of the physical pressure off them and I thought it worked pretty well."

Although they leaky defensively, as the scoreline showed, St Pat's weren't entirely bad with the ball.

Once they were chasing points they threw some errant offloads but outside that they were reasonably controlled but it's tough for any side to score points when they're all but camped in their own end for 80 minutes.

The loss leaves St Pat's with just two victories through the first eight rounds of the season.

"We're going to need to string a few games together if we're going to be any chance of even thinking of the semi-final this year," Branighan said.

"We haven't used injuries as an excuse all season but it is tough when you've got half your first grade side on the sidelines, but in saying that, that can impact you in attack but it doesn't stop you being able to tackle and our defensive effort wasn't good.

"We were really bad defensively and we were very, very poor in general but we'll stick together and keep working hard."