"Devastated."

Neill and the other members of the Dubbo Rhinos were eager to meet the defending premiers after their season opening match turned into a nail-biting contest that only just denied the Rhinos a breakthrough win.

"People know it's been quite a while since we've taken home the win and we'd definitely picked some things up this week," Neill said.

READ ALSO:

"We had a really influential outside voice with us at training this week, someone with a lot of experience who's helped us fix some things in our game."

"We felt and looked really sharp and I really thought we were poised to put it in a big game, I was really confident we had a lot of the pieces right."

While the Rhinos will receive bonus points due to CSU's forfeit, missing out on the possibility of the club's first win in two seasons is hard blow.

"It's nice to get the bonus point for the forfeit, but we would have much preferred to have earned it," Neill said.

"I don't want to take anything away from CSU, they're a fantastic side and we really get along with them, we're both really young playing groups and it's always a fun match."

"With the team we had ready today and the guys we've added, all the things we've worked on throughout the week, I think what we did in the first round would have only been the beginning."

The situation becomes tougher for the Rhinos next week, with them heading back into battle against a highly physical Parkes side that dealt them one of their roughest losses this year in their first meeting.

"We need to make sure we have the same fifteen again in training and put the sort of performance we were expecting to put up against CSU this weekend," Neill said.

"I'm positive going forward we can get one or two in the next three rounds, but it is unfortunate to miss out on the game on Saturday, that would have been ideal, we would have loved to play."

Neill says his side will have double down on improvements they've been working on all year, including a focus on maintaining possession and avoiding mistakes.

"Our new system is helping us a lot in addressing all that, I suppose the best way to put it is that we're playing smarter and simpler and it looked very sharp for us this week when we did our team run."