With glorious weather welcoming the Roosters, mother nature shined on Manildra for the game of the round in Woodbridge Cup.

Fans banged loudly on colourbond steel as the Rhinos ran out, giving you the sense of what was at stake as the competition's top four becomes hotly contested.

As expected, Sunday's match came with plenty of big hits but it was the slickness of Manildra's back-line that reigned supreme as the home side finished 36-18 winners.

The scoreline doesn't do the game justice though with Manildra scoring right on the bell and Peak Hill constantly threatening the line in the second half.

"It was very physical, we've been looking forward to that game for a while now," Manildra captain-coach Luke Petrie said.

"We played a couple of the bottom teams so we were keen for something like that to see where we were and have that physical game."

Both sides undoubtedly turned up to play and it was Torin Hando scoring first for Peak Hill with a grubber from dummy half to put his side 6-0 up.

Manildra then switched on and scored three unanswered tries with Nick Smith, Will Petrie and Grant Williams all crossing the line.

Hando was over for his second try in the 26^th minute to keep it close at 16-12.

Will Petrie scored his second try three minutes later, capitalising on a grubber from his brother Luke.

In the 32^nd minute, Manildra extended its lead through Lachie Sharp as the hooker went himself to make it 28-12 at half-time.

Peak Hill weren't going away in the second half but its third try didn't come till the 58^th minute as Clay Hartin showed brilliant support play after a terrific break from centre Nathan Ryan.

A high shot five minutes later allowed Ben McAlpine to add two points and put the Rhinos ahead 30-18.

In the following minutes, Peak Hill had its chances but errors and penalties proved costly with Manildra winger Zac Reimer scoring right on the bell to seal a 36-18 victory.

With only 14 points scored in the last 40 minutes, the second half provided an indication into the physicality of the first 40 with Roosters captain-coach Blaize Fuller proud of his side's ability to stay in the game.

"Fitness got us and they were the better side today clearly - the second half showed that we stuck it to them, they only scored in last 10 seconds so we can stick it out," he said.

"I'm proud of that (second half), the boys dug deep. They (Manildra) showed up and their defence was really good, they didn't give us much at all."

With Peak Hill now moving into outright second, Fuller added it's a positive to understand where the benchmark is.

"It's good to know what we have to work on, I feel like we can play better footy than that and we showed we can play better footy than that - we just have to get bigger and better," he said.

Petrie believes his side's first 40 minutes was up there with the best of the season.

"In the first half we've been building for that all year, it was pleasing ... to get out to that start and play how I think we should play and can play," he explained.

"Then it was the tale of two halves, we just sort of dropped away and it got a bit scrappy from both sides, with a lot of dropped ball. It gave everyone a rest and made it hard to score points, if we can do what we did in the first half we'll go pretty well."

While the second half was frustrating, Manildra's defence was a major positive as the Roosters continued to charge in attacking territory with Peak Hill centre Nick Smith kicking a 40/20 late in the game.

"It (defence) was spoken about at half-time, last year we were based on our defence and we've given away some easy points this year so it was spoken about ... to keep them out and keep them on a low score," Petrie said.

Another bright spark for Manildra was new recruit Ben McAlpine who's kicking game shut down a lot of Peak Hill's metres from the back while the fullback also grabbed a try assist.

"He's been building into it this season and hopefully there's better things to come and he keeps going," Petrie added.

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