Doolan crossed twice for the men in black, who opened scoring in the match at Wellington's Kennard Park and once they had the lead, never surrendered it.

But while beating the Cowboys at Panthers captain-coach Jake Betts knows his side still has room to improve.

"It was a bit scrappy but you expect that first round, I was pretty happy with our defence," he said.

"A couple of late tries were pretty ordinary, we sort of invited them back into the game with silly drops.

"But other than that I was pretty happy."

Like Betts mentioned, there were plenty of handling errors, but both the Panthers skipper and his Cowboys counterpart Justin Toomey-White admitted it was great to get back on the field after COVID-19 ended both the 2021 Group 10 and Group 11 seasons prematurely.

"It was, we pencilled this in the off-season, we've been talking about it for a while," Betts said.

"Pre-season is done and it was good to get out there, we are looking forward to the rest of the year."

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Toomey-White echoed Betts' thoughts and is already looking forward to the next game of the season.

"It was good to finally get some footy back, it's been a big pre-season," he said.

"The boys played well, just in patches we dropped the ball and Bathurst capitalised on that.

"It's those little handling errors that we need to work on but we will go back to the drawing board and get ready for two weeks' time."

Both sides were physical early, but it was the Panthers fullback Josh Rivett who crossed the line for the opener in the 10th minute before converting his own try to make the score 6-0.

The visitors had to wait 20 minutes before scoring again and it was Doolan who crossed, with the following conversion going wide.

Claude Gordon scored minutes later and with a successful conversion, it looked as if the visitors were going to run away with the game.

However, the Cowboys lifted in defence and while 16-0 down at the break, weren't out of the contest.

The Cowboys needed to score first after play resumed to give themselves a chance to get back in the game and Toomey-White did just that, crashing over under the posts before Mason Williams added the extras to move the score to 16-6.

But Doolan then grabbed his second try of the day and things were made worse for the Cowboys when Jacob Newman was sin-binned with 10 minutes left.

Late tries to Noah Griffiths and Keelan Bresac increased Panthers' buffer while Kenneth Everson crossed for Wellington to end the game 32-12.

Following the match, Betts admitted the Panthers squad did not know a great deal about Wellington heading into the match.

"Not really, we knew about 'Justo' [Justin Toomey-White], he's a class player," he said.

"So we were very wary of them, we didn't know what to expect but they were quality for a first round.

"I think they'll be good later on in the year as well."

Toomey-White was honest when it came to his own thoughts after the match.

"It was a tough game, we knew the calibre of players Bathurst have got," he said.

"They came here ready to play and got away with the win."

BATHURST PANTHERS 32 (Desi Doolan 2, Noah Griffiths, Josh Rivett, Claude Gordon, Keelan Bresac tries; Josh Rivett 4 goals) defeated WELLINGTON COWBOYS 12 (Justin Toomey-White, Kenneth Everson tries; Mason Williams 2 goals)

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