It may not have been enough to claim the overall prize this year – Bathurst High collected the cup last week – but plenty of pride was salvaged on Thursday and a winless run stretching back to 2011 was ended.

Dubbo College headed into day two of the tie on top but a win to Orange in the athletics gave the visitors hope.

However, in a commendable achievement, Dubbo managed to hold Orange’s much-fancied basketball and netball sides to narrow wins only while the hosts dominated the rugby league to seal a 456.5 to 343.5 overall win.

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“We’ll soak it in. We haven’t won a round in a long time and we haven’t beaten Orange in a long time,” Dubbo College Astley Cup coordinator Craig May said.

“It’s the first of many steps and everyone is really happy.”

Orange won more sports than Dubbo across the two days, however the size of the home school’s victories made all the difference in the final tally.

Making the overall win even sweeter was the fact Dubbo College also won the Mulvey Cup, the school’s debaters proving too good for their Orange counterparts on Wednesday evening.

While the highlight on day one was a somewhat surprising win in the hockey, the standout moment on Thursday came as no shock.

Plenty was expected of Dubbo College’s talented rugby league side and it delivered in style.

With a host of representative players in the side’s ranks, Dubbo proved far too strong and ran out convincing 52-10 winners.

And while a drought-breaking overall win was a proud moment, May was even more pleased with the support his students showed for each other across the two days.

“The atmosphere is fantastic and the school spirit that showed in that (rugby league) crowd and at the netball and the basketball, it was fabulous and you can’t buy that,” he said.

“I don’t know how you get school spirit like that. It’s what the Astley Cup brings and it was a fabulous day.”

While there was joy in the Dubbo camp, there was real disappointment among the Orange High teachers and students.

Their Astley Cup dream ended last week when suffering a narrow, 16-point loss to Bathurst and this week they were unable to get over a Dubbo squad cheered on by a huge amount of home support.

“It’s not the win but I’m really impressed by Dubbo and their school spirit,” Orange’s Astley Cup coordinator Tegan Dray said.

“They have been investing a lot in that in the last couple of years and really giving it to the other teams in terms of their sportsmanship and they did a fantastic job here.

“They deserved it in the end and won some sports pretty convincingly.”

Dray said one positive for her side was the amount of support on day two.

“They were pretty quiet yesterday (Wednesday) but they managed to turn things around … even if you’re down that support matters.”

May found it hard to pick one single highlight across the two days.

“Every result, I can’t fault any of them,” he said.

“Those (netball) girls put in, in basketball we had Orange flog Bathurst and Bathurst flog us so we should have got flogged but Orange got a 10-point win and it was probably closer than that.

“I could go through 20 or 30 kids who contributed to this win. It was top stuff.”

Tennis: Orange won 8-4 (67-33 Astley Cup points split)

Girls’ football: 1-1 draw (50-50)

Boys’ football: Dubbo won 5-1 (83-17)

Hockey: Dubbo won 3-1 (75-25)

Athletics: Orange won (56.5-43.5)

Basketball: Orange won 52-42 (56-45)

Netball: Orange won 38-32 (55-45)

Rugby League: Dubbo won 52-10 (83-17)

Overall: Dubbo 456.5 defeated Orange 343.5