Nadurutalo hat-trick dumps Silktails in Ron Massey opener

Sydney: Fijian Residents captain, Luke Nadurutalo scored three tries for the Saint Mary’s Saints as they thrashed the Kaiviti Silktails 56-6 at McCredie Park in Guildford, on Saturday night.

Silktails coach Wes Naiqama said it had been a tough night for his team but they would learn from the experience.

Their fans finally had something to cheer about late in the second half when centre Inoke Vasuturaga, whose wife gave birth to his second child this week, grabbed a try.

“I don’t know if they’re a 56-point better team than us but I’ve always said it was going to take a couple of weeks or month for us to get used to the intensity of this (Ron Massey) competition,” Naiqama said. “Regardless of the scoreline there’s a lot of positives and a lot of things we can learn from in that game to be better at next week.

“That’s part of this journey. St Marys have been a very strong team for a very long time but it was good to get a gauge of where we’re at, we’ll identify areas that we need to be better at the first one being discipline to adapt to that six-again rule.

“Once the boys see this on video and we break the game down in certain parts they’ll see the bigger picture video but the week-to-week goal is to be better every week.”

There had been plenty of hype around the Silktails after they relocated to Australia for the next seven months to take part in the competition but they proved no match for a team that had made consecutive Grand Finals in 2018-19 before sitting out last season due to COVID-19.