An extremely cold and strong wind blew straight across the ground all afternoon and you would have to sympathise with anyone trying to catch a high ball or in the spectators’ case, if they forgot to take a jumper.

Claro got off to a good start and were making superior ground through the middle of the ruck which enabled several options in their attack on the edges and Whaleboat opened the scoring when he combined with Alison to give the Cobras an early 4-0 lead.

From the resuming set Papamau made a 40-metre break down the right hand side edge for Bradley to steam on to a pass and burst through would be defenders to add further points.

The conversion gave the Cobras a 10-nil lead 13 minutes into the match.

The Hornets were in trouble again from the restart when their kick went into touch on the full and with all the momentum Claro surged their way downfield and it was Bradley again who ran strongly off a Badior pass to crash through the opposition to score under the posts and extend the lead to 16-0.

This time it was a Claro error from the restart which saw Hinton regain possession and after opting for a cross field kick on the sixth tackle they were rewarded with their first points of the game which reduced the deficit to 16-6.

However the Cobras were quick to reply when Batey finished off a nice passing movement to cross wide out and stretch the lead to 20-6.

Just four minutes later Batey was again in the thick of things when he ran off a deft pass from Middleton to cross for a double which enabled Claro to now lead 24-6.

The barrage of first half tries continued when Papamau crossed with six minutes to go before the break and Whaleboat hurt the home side even more when he too bagged a double after running off a neat Badior pass to score.

The seven tries to one first half blitz by the Cobras resulting in a 34-4 halftime lead which they thoroughly deserved.

It would be fair to say that not too much at the ground improved during the second half. The wind became even stronger and colder whilst the game lost a little of its first half spark.

The Cobras applied the early pressure but found themselves on the back foot when the Hornets winger intercepted a pass from the Claro attack and raced 90 metres to take the score to 34-10.

Claro seemed to have scored next when Badior ran off a beautiful pass from Bradley only to have it called back by the linesman but Matt Hinton made sure his effort couldn’t be denied when he pushed three would be defenders out of his way to crash over next to the posts for a 40-10 lead.

During the next 15 minutes the Cobras were unable to handle the high ball and on two occasions spilled sixth tackle kicks which in turn enabled the Hornets to add a further 10 points to close the margin to 40-20.

But the Cobras regrouped and it was Badior who capped off a fine game by scoring the final two tries of the match. With Claro regaining all the forward motion he simply took full advantage of good play the balls and was too clever out of dummy half for the opposition to give his side a 50-20 final scoreline.

The Cobras thoroughly deserved their victory and apart from the three or four errors that led to tries were completely dominant and for much of the game played some very entertaining rugby league.

This weekend the Cobras will play Swansea at Clarence Town on Sunday at 2pm.