The Tigers hit the ground running and took advantage of a lacklustre Blues side to race out to a 28-0 lead at the break.

A much-improved second-half performance wasn’t enough to continue Kendall’s unbeaten start to the season.

The Blues scored four unanswered tries themselves, but it wasn’t enough and Kettle put it down to “being one of those days.”

“We were flat in the warm-up and were flat when the game started, but they were ready to go,” he said.

“They rolled over us with their forwards and controlled the game really well.”

Todd Hurrell pulled the strings for Comboyne, benefiting from a dominant forwards display.

Kendall’s cause wasn’t helped when they lost centre Jahbe Latham after five minutes and centre partner Tom Wigman was unavailable.

“I’m not making excuses, but we missed both of them a lot,” Kettle said.

“They do our hard work coming out of trouble and take the pressure off the forwards a little bit.”

Comboyne provided a much sterner test than Kendall had been accustomed to over the opening four rounds and they couldn’t go with them.

“We haven’t come up against a really solid team like them so far this season and we had no answer in the first half,” Kettle said.

“We knocked on at crucial times and a little bit of complacency probably crept in after the first couple of rounds.”

The second-half performance provided Kettle with cause for optimism that the Blues hadn’t been found out and would still challenge for the title.

“I’m not concerned at all – we managed to keep them scoreless in the second half,” he said.

“If we had have been rolled again in the second half it would have been a different story, but it was a bit of a reality check for us.”

In other matches, Beechwood Shamrocks defeated Long Flat Dragons 34-26, Lower Macleay continued their perfect start to the season with a 40-30 win over South West Rocks and Laurieton piled on the misery with a 54-6 demolition of the Boardriders.