Western Rams were defeated 26-18 by Riverina in a trial match at Young

The Rams opens squad took to the field at Young on Sunday in a trial fixture against Riverina Bulls and it was the latter who came away with a 26-18 victory.

Much was made about the talent the Western side possessed ahead of their first match as a team but Greenhalgh is confident the group has a lot of improvement left in them.

"It didn't really matter about the score, it was more about getting the little things right and blowing the cobwebs out," he said.

"Hopefully it did that because we weren't good by any means, we had a chat after it about what's expected.

"We were probably a little bit underdone compared to the other side but in saying that we were leading for most of the game.

"When you have 24 players to chop and change in key positions you couldn't quite get things flowing, we were just out of sorts and trying to do hard at times."

Returning Western Rams representatives Alex Ronayne, Nick Greenhalgh and Mitch Andrews all featured in Sunday's side while a handful of newer talents got a chance to show their skills.

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While he has represented Western before, Justin Toomey-White made his Rams return on Sunday in what was the first game in many months for most of the group.

It's the lack of football played between September 2022 and Sunday which doesn't have Greenhalgh too worried about the patchy performance.

"That's right exactly (they haven't played much footy), a lot of them haven't played together, it's a quality team but sometimes the boys are waiting for someone to do something," he said.

"We need to get that out of us across the next few training runs we have, we need to do a few things as a team and work on our defence.

"Our defensive efforts could be a little bit better because I know that we have plenty of attack there, we just couldn't quite get our hands on the ball enough."

To their credit, the Riverina side was well prepared and will face Monaro Colts on March 5 in their opening round.

For the Rams, they will be in action a day earlier against Northern Tigers at Farrer's John Simpson Oval.

Between now and then, Greenhalgh said the squad will get together a few more times in preparation for the knockout fixture.

"I think we were all a little bit flat and the boys realised it, I suppose you can see the effort but it was just going unrewarded," he said.

"We didn't really reach any great heights where we could get excited, we didn't take our chances even though we bombed a couple of tries.

"Like I said the score didn't matter, a couple of training runs are left so we can sort that stuff out. The boys are pretty down with our effort too which is a good thing."

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