The Cowboys, who went into the match without Lewis Stanley and Richard Peckham, sang their team song loud and proud in the sheds after recording a 40-24 win while over in the Raiders dressing room, players and officials were at a loss to explain what went wrong.

A week after being blown off the park in a 40-26 loss against CYMS the Raiders looked much better yesterday, and after conceding the first try they replied with three of their own - including a length-of-the-field effort from Ash Widders - to take an 18-4 lead after half-an-hour of play.

But when Justin Toomey-White bagged his second of the afternoon and Chris Jones scored on the stroke of half-time, the sides went into the rooms with the score reading 18-14 in favour of the hosts.

The absence of Josh Merritt, sin-binned for dissent just prior to Jones' try, haunted Macquarie in the early minutes of the second half when Toomey-White touched down for his hat-trick to give the Cowboys the lead. The try came at a cost however when he left the field with an ankle injury.

Macquarie were battling problems of their own, with lock Perry Meredith (shoulder) gone for the game, and Dylan Hill, Matt Lane and Ash Conn all battling injury or illness.

Robbie Donn extended Wellington's advantage to eight points with a try in the 48th minute before Jeremy Smith got Macquarie back into the game with a try of his own, leaving the score 26-24 to the visitors.

When Rian Humphries scored after a Macquarie error on the ensuing set it gave the Cowboys an eight-point buffer again, before Nathan Smith's try four minutes from full-time and a penalty goal from Norm West sealed the deal.

"We haven't played to our potential the past couple of weeks and people were writing us off, but we trained real hard this week and got the reward," Toomey-White said after the match.

"Even after we scored the first try we were a bit flat again and Macquarie took advantage of that but I was really happy with how we came back into the game and went on with it in the second half.

"That gives us a buffer over Macquarie now and we've got CYMS next week so if we can win that we'll put ourselves in a good spot for the minor premiership."

Macquarie coach Steve McLellan was left scratching his head afterwards, frustrated by his side's performance and also with the officiating.

"At 18-4 we should have been able to take that into the sheds and look forward to another 40 minutes. It was some our best attacking football of the year," McLellan said.

"But we gave away a penalty and didn't see the ball again, and let them back into the game and to their credit they were good enough to put some points on us.

"The penalties hurt us and I'm concerned where we are with the referees at the moment.

"All we ask for is consistency with the penalties, we talk with them (the referees) and try to work with them but something's going wrong.

"The same happened last week, we had one penalty in a run of seven penalties to CYMS so I don't know, we're not coached for foul play or anything so I'm at a loss to explain it."

o WELLINGTON COWBOYS 40 (Justin Toomey-White 3, Robbie Donn, Chris Jones, Rian Humphries, Nathan Smith tries; Norm West 6 goals) def DUBBO MACQUARIE 24 (Ash Widders, Chris Daley, Jeremy Smith, Dylan Hill tries; Mason Williams 4 goals)