Unfortunately one minute later Uni was back on level terms at Henlsey Athletic Field and that's where the score remained, Western posting its second 1-all draw in as many weeks.

Just as was the case the previous round, while happy to pick up a competition point Western coach Mark Rooke couldn't help but think it was a draw that so easily could have been a win.

"To be honest it should have been three. It was good to get a point against a really good quality opposition, but still disappointing not to win," he said.

"We played really well for 89 minutes of the game and that one minute switch off cost us. But look, I was still really pleased with the boys, from top to bottom they were great.

"We got it right from the very start. The tactics I delivered at the start of the game were based on the way they played against us last year and they played exactly the same.

"We just nullified what they had ... we stopped them playing out from the back and they only got limited ball forward.

"The ball they did get forward to their big guy, although our centre back is a little bit shorter than him, he was able to deal with that. We generally cleaned up what they had."

READ MORE: Western NSW FC earns its first points with 1-all draw against Nepean

READ MORE: Cosgrove impresses in his role as Western's stand-in goalkeeper

READ MORE: Bathurst '75 goes down in its return women's premier league match

Both sides created chances to break the 1-all deadlock, Western's coming 15 minutes into the second half.

A cracking Matt Hobby effort was saved, but Uni's goalkeeper then dropped the ball. Long was there waiting however his attempt went over the crossbar.

Western had to play the final 10 minutes a man short after Tatsuya Sato controversially had what was initially a yellow card upgraded to a red for a bad tackle, but were able to hold on.

"We've still go things to work on, but collectively as a group we defended a whole lot better which was good and the thing we really needed to stress was just to retain more of the ball coming out from the back, which is what we did," he said.

"We were great playing out of the back, we were confident playing out of the back and that is something we need to do more against the better teams. The more times you give them the ball back, the harder it gets."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: