Brien's men were brilliant with the ball as they skittled the defending champions for 88 on a wicket dampened by rain on Thursday and Friday evenings, but their effort with the bat in falling eight runs short left a lot to be desired.

"That's the second time it's happened to us, we should have won against Souths in the first round as well," Brien said.

"But that's cricket. We have to learn from it but it's only a 10-round competition so we have to turn things around pretty quickly.

"Our bowling is really good but our batting has to pick up a bit. We were good the week before against Newtown but we need to be like that consistently."

After winning the toss, Brien has little hesitation in choosing to field first and his bowlers backed him up.

Openers Jeremy Dickson (2-11 off six) and Ben Taylor (3-8 off 8.3) were again among the wickets, backed up by birthday boy Angus Cusack (2-16 off seven) and Mitch Williams-Hedges (2-27 off five).

It was only some solid lower-order batting from Tim Howarth (28) and Tom Atlee (22) that helped Colts to a total that was defendable and they, along with skipper Chris Morton (11), were the only batsmen to reach double figures.

With plenty in the wicket to help the bowlers, Morton elected to give spinner Greg Buckley the new ball and he terrorised Macquarie's batsmen.

Most of the Blues top order got starts, with Ed Haylock (12), Dan Medway (8), Nick Cosier (8), Jason Green (8) and Cusack (13) all getting in to a degree.

Number 10 Brad Johnson (12) provided some late resistance but when he fell it wrapped up an innings that saw the Blues bowled out for just 80.

Englishman Buckley was helped by Tim Howarth, who took 3-28 off 12 by extracting plenty of movement from the wicket.

"Tim and Greg both bowled well but it was more a case of us trying not to lose," Brien said.

"We had 40-odd overs to bat out, which is only about two an over, but we batted like we wanted to get them knocked over and the conditions weren't really good for that.

"Our best hope now is to have a good first session next week and try to rip through them again and see if we can manage an outright, even though first innings points are gone."

Colts ended day one on 0-1 in their second innings after seeing out four overs late in the evening.