Pickers overcome Lakes as Maitland's '71 and '73 premiership heroes watch on | VIDEO

The Maitland Pickers got their first taste of life as the reigning premiers at the Maitland Sportsground and came away with a 38-24 win against Lakes United on Saturday.

With the Pumpkin Pickers premiership heroes from 1971 and 1973 watching on, Maitland were forced to work overtime for the points.

Lakes stole the jump on the Pickers twice. First it was an electrifying start when two well-placed kicks gave them a 12-0 lead and then they turned a 16-12 half-time deficit into a 24-22 lead within minutes of the resumption of play in the second half.

But each time the Pickers rolled up their sleeves and in a methodical, workman-like performance countered and then overcome the game Seagulls.

"We got beaten to the punch right from the start. Lakes out-enthused us, they wanted the collision a bit more than what we did," Pickers coach Matt Lantry said after the game.

"The collision on the offensive side with their carries and the collision defensively we really struggled with that area. We were sort of ambushed a bit.

"We smelt a bit of a rat in our warm-up. The feedback was the guys were a bit flat, execution wasn't where it normally is and I think that showed in our first 10 to 15 minutes.

"There are some factors towards that. We will never make excuses for a poor performance but having a Sunday game out at Kurri on a really heavy track made recovery difficult."

To compound that there was a disrupted training week with rain forcing the cancellation of Tuesday's session on the track.

Lantry said being tested on the scoreboard was not an entirely bad thing, but there would be some work on how they deal with opposition attacking kicks on their line.

"You don't want to be leading in games all the time and when you get behind crumble under pressure because you are chasing the scoreboard.

"I thought we took some time to find our opportunities and just hung tough for a period of time.

"When you look at their first two tries, both came from kicks. It's disappointing to concede tries from kicks and I'm a bit disappointed that four of the last six tries including the two against Kurri came from kicks. That's an area we've got to work on."

After getting back on top in the first half, Lantry said some of the tackling to start the second term was a bit pedestrian and lacked the intensity required and Lakes made them pay.

"Again we had to recompose ourselves and wait for our opportunities again."

Lantry said he backed the Pickers fitness to overcome opponents in tight games.

"We always knew the longer the game went if the scoreline was close we were always confident we would find a way to win, because no one works harder than us in our preseasons," he said.

"Again at the back end of each half we came out on top because of our level of conditioning.

"We can take our game to another level and it is a challenge for other teams to stay with us consistently."

Lakes five-eighth Ryan Potts and fullback Caleb Faulkner scored early tries for the Seagulls in both halves.

The Pickers countered in the first half through winger Will Nieuwenhuise, Brock Lamb and Jayden Butterfield.

In the second half, Chad O'Donnell, Alex Langbridge, Lincoln Smith and in his first try for the club in first grade centre Luke Kelly crossed.

Smith was named player of the match by the Pickers Old Boys and Lantry was also pleased with the performances of Sam Anderson, Dan Langbridge and front-rowers Butterfield and James Taylor in a powerful second-half stint to turn the game Maitland's way.

"Sammy Anderson got through 70 minutes. I pushed him a little bit further that we would normally in the second half to change some things up in the middle third," Lantry said.

"I brought Taylor and Butterfield back early in the second half to try to create some momentum through the middle third and they made a big difference."

The Pickers host South Newcastle on Easter Monday in their next game.

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