After falling to a 18-point defeat at the hands of DPC Roosters in their season opener, Blueheelers coach James Dole was frustrated his side weren't able to stick to what they had worked on.

"There were some positives and negatives that we took out of it for sure, and we talked about it last night at training," he said.

"I thought our forwards in the middle really held up, and I was really pleased with that, but we went away from what we had planned to do.

"Being the first game of the season fatigue really got to us and our attack looked really clunky and went away from what we had trained to do which was disappointing. We have acknowledged that and we will be working really hard to stick to our processes this weekend even when we are getting tired."

The trip to Hay will see two sides who have become almost rivals in the past 12 months look to pick up their first win of the season.

"Especially after how it played out last year with those boys being deemed not allowed to play finals. We ended up playing them in the final round and got the job done on them after they'd beaten us earlier in the season," he said.

"There has been a good battle between us in the past couple of seasons and going on what they have put up in the preseason I expect them to be pretty strong competition again this year."

Having drawn the toughest team to start the season against, in one of the favourites, Dole has set his sights on getting through the rest of the first round of fixtures undefeated.

"I don't think it's too farfetched to say that they (DPC) are going to be the benchmark this year," he said.

"Coming out of that three tries behind is certainly a positive given that we didn't play the game we wanted to. We started with the toughest team out of the gates, but now I think we will be aiming to get through the rest of the first round without a loss."