By MARK CASHMAN

They’ve tried to fly under the radar in the opening weeks of the Shute Shield but Gordon made an unmissable statement when they manhandled Warringah from the opening minutes to the very end of their 52-7 win on Saturday.

In scoring eight tries to one against last year’s grand finalists, the Highlanders showed that they will go deep into this competition and the fact that they will have a flow of stars coming back from Super Rugby at the start of September makes them even scarier.

Jack Dempsey, Charlie Abel and Joey Walton will come back from the Waratahs while Charlie’s brother Jacob, a very handy scrum half, is expected to return from the Western Force.

The key though for Gordon coach Darren Coleman is to work all this talent into a group that can work together to break the club’s recent run of outs.

That aside Gordon based their most complete performance of recent seasons on the back of a dominant scrum and an appetite for robust contact at the breakdown.

It all started in the opening couple of minutes when the Rats set piece came under pressure big time.

The Rats had seen this coming and tried to blunt the Gordon scrum by starting with Faavae Sila and although he tried hard the synergy and power of the Highlanders scrum was there for all to see and it took its toll.

The toll from the scrum work also sapped a lot of the energy from Rats skipper Sam Ward’s running game, an essential part of getting their lively back three on the front foot.

On top of that Rodney Iona’s kicking game consistently kept Gordon at the right end of the field and made Warringah have to work hard to get any sort of territory.

The score was 26-0 at the break and continued to build right throughout the second half and it was only in the final minutes that Warringah were able to get over the line through Tyson Davis.

Gordon coach Coleman said the scoreline was a nice surprise.

“Yes that was a result that we worked hard for. Those days don’t happen all the time so it was important the boys enjoy them when they do,” Coleman said.

“The Rats just had an off day. They’ll be back, there’s no doubt about that.

“We spent a lot of time on our maul and scrum this week in anticipation of the weather so it was pleasing to get pay.
“I’d been riding our forwards and staff hard as we hadn’t scored a maul try in three games so to get four tries off the back of it was pleasing.

“Rod Iona (flyhalf) and Harrison Goddard (scrumhalf) were solid again but Rhys Brodie and Brandon Faavae-Eli (props) are unsung heroes of the team.

Coleman added that the hard work was not over for his group.

“We must add to to our game in the consistency of execution and we have some work ons to get back to.

“No team ever won a championship in Round Four so there are lot of twists and turns to happen in this year’s Shute Shield yet.”.

Warringah coach Mike Ruthven said there weren’t too many areas where they were in the game.

“That was really disappointing and not part of the script (for this season),” Ruthven said.

“Our scrum was obviously an issue but we have a very good scrum coach and the lads will continue to work hard there.

“We found it very difficult to get any rhythm in attack and when we did we found ourselves executing poorly at our breakdown combined with simple handling errors.

“Every time we looked to be building some pressure we let them off the hook.

“Full credit to the Gordon forward pack who were physical in defence and competed hard for the footy

“I thought we scrambled really well at times and at no point did the team roll over – that was evident in their desire to be the last scorer of the game.”

GORDON 52 (Mahe Vailanu 2, Harrison Goddard, Rodney Iona, Brandon Quinn, Lucas Price, Ahmu Tuimalealiifano, James Widders-Leece tries; Iona 6 conversions) d WARRINGAH 7 (Tyson Davis try; Harley Attwater conversion).

IMAGE: ANDREW QUINN / GORDON RUGBY