IT was fitting that Bathurst Panthers were in a tribute Bathurst Railway jumper on Saturday night, because they had the momentum of a runaway freight train.
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Panthers laid on more than a point a minute in the opening half of their Peter McDonald Premiership match against the Cowra Magpies and when the final whistle sounded, the scoreboard read 64-10.
Jake Betts' men ran in 11 tries on their way to the commanding win at Carrington Park.
"That's about as good as it gets," the skipper said.
"That first half we completed 17 out of 19 sets and the two that we dropped were sort of down in the corner when we were attacking. It was a pretty clinical first half performance, I was pretty happy with that."
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Panthers wore the red and green colours as part of Railway's 1980 and 1981 title-winners' reunion.
"A few of the old boys came and did a jersey presentation before the game and they spoke about how special the jersey was to them. They're all coming back 40 years later to celebrate and that's just how good footy is," Betts said.
"We spoke about doing the jersey proud and we did that today."
All teams in the Group 11 pool had the bye on the weekend due to the NRL match at Dubbo, while St Pat's and Mudgee also scored Group 10 pool victories.
Mudgee maintained second spot in Group 10 with a convincing 54-6 win over Lithgow while St Pat's piled more pain on Orange Hawks.
After three straight wins to start the season, the weekend marked the third successive loss for the Orange side.
Pat's ran out 28-16 winners over Hawks on Sunday.
"We were probably our own worst enemy in defence, those one-on-one tackles cost us and burnt a bit of our energy and when we got into attack we probably weren't patient enough," Hawks captain Alex Prout said.
"We know what we've done wrong, it's our own errors, it's probably been the same story the last few weeks ... if we fix them we will be competitive through the back end of the year."
Orange CYMS remain top of the Group 10 pool after having a bye on the weekend.
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