Skinner was sidelined for the fixture following a gruesome injury to his thumb during Saturday's RSL Whitney Cup, while attempting to dislodge Rugby's Ben Wheeler mid-way through a century scoring effort.

READ ALSO:

"He kind of hit it back to me and I just went for it on reflex and I thought, 'I'm lucky that didn't break my thumb' and then I looked down and saw there was bone sticking out and I thought, 'oh, that's not good'," Skinner said.

Following surgery, he only managed to make it out of the hospital in time to watch the back half of his side scramble to a narrow victory over Parkes.

But despite copping a broken thumb that will likely see him off the green for at least a month, if not longer, the Dubbo captain is taking some positives away from the opening round clash.

"We've definitely shown how much depth we have here in Dubbo now, when you look at the line-up and you've got guys like Roland O'Connor, who's a handy opening batsman for Rugby usually and he's at number 10 for us, that's something," Skinner said.

There's also talk of a few more names sticking their hand up and showing interested, with Mitch Bower tipped to possibly return to the representative side in the coming weeks.

"That's awesome, a player of Mitch's quality and calibre putting his hand up has the squad looking really good at the moment," Skinner said.

While Dubbo only just managed to sneak past Parkes' total of 105 on Sunday, losing nine wickets on the way to a total of 106, there's also plenty to crow about in the current line-up, after steady performances from Ben Wheeler and Bailey Edmunds helped keep the winners on target.

Wheeler hung in early to bat out 47 runs and set a stable platform, while Edmunds stripped Parkes of 4 wickets for just 14 runs before adding on a crucial 13 more with the bat as part of Dubbo's tail.

"It was really good for the boys, Ben's hit a bit of a purple patch right at the moment, he hit something like 50 last week, then he scored 100 against us and another 40-odd in the rep, he's hitting the ball really well," Skinner said.

"Bailey Edmunds, he really came through for us there at the end in that last sort of twenty runs, which was big for us, but it just shows off that depth."

While Skinner isn't happy to be missing out on time on-field, calling the injury 'frustrating', there is some cause for comfort, with next weekend's highly anticipated matchup with Bathurst still sitting under a cloud with some significant rain expected to hit the hosts next Sunday.

Discussions are underway that could see the promising fixture shifted to grounds closer to home.

"We're still in the process of talking to Bathurst at the moment, to see if there's any chance of moving the game, because there's a fair chance that it'll get washed out anyway."