Starting with United, Nic Milne's squad scraped past a brave Souths group to the tune of 2-1.

Heidi Townsend and Eva Reith-Snare unsurprisingly found the back of the net for the newly-formed side, Milne dubbing the duo as two of his most important players this winter.

At the tail end of the 2020 season, Pete Shea's CYMS were the story of the competition as they finished with a flurry of wins on their way to an unlikely finals berth.

The green and golds picked up where they left off at the end of last season, shutting out Parkes at home in a 1-0 showing.

While it was far from a clinical display, Shea was obviously content with a winning result to kick the year off.

"It's good to take a very young team away and get the win at Parkes," Shea said.

"We played a pretty composed style that allowed us to create a victory ... that was great.

"What was really nice was that the team worked for each other and worked together very well which is great to see at this time of the year."

Like many sides, CYMS are suffering from a large amount of player turnover which made the triumph even more impressive.

"We have the same nucleus as last year with Maddie and Libby Smith but we had four kids yesterday who made their first grade debut," he said.

Shea touched on the areas that need improvement at training, starting with the overall flow of the attack.

"We moved the ball around at times yesterday but we'd like to do it more consistently," he said.

"If we can do that, it'll allow us to control the game a little bit more."

It was a relieving win overall as Shea would rather be in a comfortable position at the end of the year, as opposed to needing a miracle to make the post-season, ala 2020. Ex-Services weren't as lucky as their town mates in round one as Daryl Kennewell's girls fell 5-1 to the defending premiers, Lithgow Panthers.

Panthers would be considered by many as the premiership favourites after moving through last year's campaign in dominant fashion.

Shian Kennewell was the only player to get on the stat sheet for the losing side.

The fourth scheduled match between Bathurst St Pat's and Bathurst City was deferred. After one round of play, Panthers, United and CYMS occupy the top three spots on the table, while City, Pat's, Souths, Parkes and Ex-Services round out the standings.

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