THE Villages United side went into 2015 with high hopes that they could have an impact in the New Era Cup but realistically, a solid start would have probably been satisfactory enough.

Coming off an ordinary 2014 in which they only won one match and conceded an average of 40 points a game, just being competitive would have been an immediate improvement.

Already it looks like they can set their sights a bit higher than that.

Coming off a rousing 34-6 win over the Orange Barbarians in round one, Saturday saw them smash competition newcomers Lithgow Giants 62-12.

Their coaching combination of Jarrod Gafa and Kris Kennedy is clearly having a positive impact, and Kennedy is confident that it isn’t a false dawn.

“It has been a pretty good start to the competition, we’ve spent a lot of time in the pre-season getting things organised like sponsors and jerseys and trying to get new players to the club,” he said.

“The results in the first couple of weeks have been good and it is nice to see the work paying off.

“In the first half of the game against Barbarians it was pretty tight but we pulled away from them in the second, we piled on a few points towards the end of the game.”

Saturday’s match at Perthville against the Giants was one that the Villages team could rightly go into as favourites, and they didn’t disappoint.

But Kennedy was understanding of the opposition’s predicament as a group who are still trying to find their feet.

“We’ve been training since early in February and have some pretty good combinations, they looked like a team who are pretty new and it is never going to happen overnight for a side in that situation,” he explained.

“There weren’t any particular standouts in our side, really everyone across the paddock played pretty well and made it hard for them.”

In the coming weeks Villages will get a better of idea of just where they sit in the overall scheme of things when they face the two CSU teams when the competition resumes after the ANZAC Day weekend.

“I think we have the potential to match it with some of those teams at the top like CSU and Blackheath and Lithgow Bears, I also think Wallerawang is going to be pretty strong this year,” Kennedy said.

“We had a good crowd behind us at Perthville on the weekend, we only got approved to go ahead with hosting the match there during the week. We will be hard to beat there.”