ORANGE Emus travelled to the Cowra Twilight 10s on Saturday looking for a decent hit-out and a chance for some of their players to blow a few cobwebs out.

They achieved that with five solid matches of 10-a-side rugby, along with giving a few new faces their first run in Emus colours.

Losing two of their pool games and drawing the other nil-all against Merrylands, Emus qualified for the Bowl competition, beating Campbelltown Harlequins in the quarter-finals before going down to eventual Bowl champions Hawkesbury in the semi-finals.

Hawkesbury proceeded to beat the Cobar Camels in the Bowl final.

Emus co-coach Trent Auld was happy with the run his players got.

“It wasn’t too bad. The 10s served its purpose, we got five games out of the day,” Auld said.

Former Manly back-rower Harley McAllister had his first run for the club and impressed his new coach.

“It was good for guys like Harley to get a game. We had our first look at him and he’ll be a handy acquisition,” Auld said.

“Apart from that TJ Cunynghame played fairly strongly and Dan Brown had his first game for the club.”

Only one win from five attempts doesn’t make good reading for the Emus’ brains trust, however, Auld isn’t fazed.

“We didn’t really take a 10s squad up to the tournament,” he said.

“Two of the sides we played in the group stage progressed to the Cup competition, so we came up against some pretty good opposition.

“It was our first hit-out of the year, so no one is really concerned.”

Western Wolfpack beat Easts 29-19 in the Cup competition to take out this year’s Cowra Twilight 10s major prize.

Emus will have their first 15-a-side trial game this weekend against Mosman and Auld says he will get a better gauge at where the greens are at from that game.