Seven days after knocking off Port City, the Blues had their chances to make it two from two against Port Macquarie opposition.

In the end, the Sharks goal-line defence held firm in the dying seconds as they hung on to register a 12-10 win in a match punctuated by errors and penalties.

Wauchope coach Anthony Boyd wasn’t too disheartened by his team’s performance which wrapped up their pre-season ahead of the Group 3 opener on April 14.

“We were very clunky in attack although our defence was pretty good for this time of the year,” he said.

“There was a lot of dropped ball, but you expect that in a pre-season trial.”

The Wauchope coach admitted his team had room for improvement especially with the ball in hand.

“We know we’ve got a lot of improvement in us and the boys did show glimpses of what they’re capable of in attack,” he said.

“Overall we probably didn’t offer a lot, but we’re about getting the fundamentals right early in the season.”

Boyd was impressed with the performance of new signing Liam Quinn at lock, along with Beau White in the centres and Sam Watts at fullback.

“It’s hard to single out any specific players, but as a whole defensively we were pretty good,” he said.

“One or two bad reads cost us.”

Watts delivered the final pass for Tristan Scott’s first-half try and also offered glimpses of what he’s capable of in both defence and attack.

“We rode Sam pretty hard in the off season,” Boyd said.

“I had a brief word to him and he’s played a better role for us in our three trials.”

The Blues now have three weeks until the season opener at Old Bar and Boyd admitted it wasn’t ideal to have such a gap between games.

“It would have been nice to have had the pre-season pushed back a week or two because three weeks is too long to not do any contact work,” he said.

“But we’ll work hard amongst ourselves.”