By MARK CASHMAN

Christian Poidevin is still very much in the early stages of his Shute Shield career but he underlined his worth to his side Randwick at the weekend in their 42-24 win over Sydney Uni on Saturday.

Poidevin has been missing for the past three games – Northern Suburbs, Gordon and Eastwood – all matches they lost with the game against Norths heavier than the other two and one that may be looked upon as a turning point.

Randwick skipped out to a 28-0 lead in the first half hour of the 7TWO TV match of the round with Ben Donaldson, feeling a lot more at home than the week before, and Dave Horwitz doing some good stuff.

“Poido was a big in for us,” Galloping Greens coach Ben McCormack said.

“He’s such a presence at the breakdown and he runs good support lines which has been missing from our game for the past couple of weeks.

“The best part of the Uni game is the way that they start their games and we were able to stay with them and them get away a bit which was good.

“I just had a feeling that Uni weren’t the Uni that we have seen in recent times and there a few more errors than you would expect.

“But I must say that it was good to erase last week (the performance against Norths at Rat Park).”

Randwick did lose Maurice Longbottom early but Tom Molloy, who had played a full game and did well getting over for a try as things loosened up.

The Wicks scrum worked well for the most part with big Melbourne Rebels prop Cabous Eloff providing some welcome bulk with George Hendry out with a head knock.

The Randwick line out was back up to expectation and provided a good platform which helped the play makers.

Uni coach Michael Hodge tipped his hat to the way that Randwick had started the game on what was Back to Uni day at Camperdown.

“Credit to Randwick. They punished our mistakes early in the game which was one of the things that we spoke about before the game and not doing,” Hodge said.

“Our set piece was strong, but I must say that there were some teething and timing issues around the park.

“We’ve got games against the top two teams over the next two week so we need to be better.”

RANDWICK 42 (Christian Poidevin, Mitch Short, Brooklyn Hardaker, Triston Reilly 2, Tom Molloy tries; Ben Donaldson 6 conversions) d SYDNEY UNI 24 (Declan Moore, Rohan O’Regan, Ben Hughes, Jack McCalman tries; Hughes 2 conversions) at University No.2 Oval.

IMAGE: RANDWICK RUGBY