Wests remain unbeaten at the top of the Illawarra League ladder after seeing off De La Salle 40-26 in a high-scoring affair at Parrish Park on Saturday.
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In a match that saw 12 tries in total, the Devils jumped the visitors from the start and never really looked like surrendering the lead.
Pete McLeod's side was also forced to overcome the loss of young gun Kyan Hjaltason to a questionable sin-binning eight minutes before halftime, but found two tries while down a man to keep momentum.
Heading south with some key outs, De La were gallant in defeat but could not produce the same touches of class despite drawing back within eight with consecutive tries with 18 minutes to play.
It proved as close as they got, four tries to winger Te'wehi Watere not enough to put Luke Manahan's side within reach of victory.
It leaves Wests the only side in the competition yet to suffer defeat this season, a draw with De La in their first meeting in round two the only half blemish on their record.
It's come despite a heavy injury toll, and without a truly signature victory over the opening seven rounds, but McLeod said his side will need to move through the gears over the next month.
"You've got to be happy, you're playing team running second and you end up with a pretty convincing win in the end," McLeod said.
"As far as a complete performance, it wasn't there yet. We're doing well for parts of games, but we're not doing well for long periods.
"We're not really happy with the way we're playing but it's a long season. Competitions aren't won in the first round, they aren't won one in around six or seven.
"We just need to continue getting better, get everyone fit and healthy and improve as the season goes on. This is a really strong comp, you've got to play well every week to get to points and we've got a majority of our personnel back now.
"Hopefully we get them for a few weeks and we just need to really look at, putting complete performances in and that's just focusing on every play.
"We can be really good for periods of a game, but we need to be really good for 80 minutes. There's an end goal here and we just got to keep working as hard as we can to get there."
The Devils shot out of the blocks with tries to Colby Pellow and Mitch Porter, with Josep Dickson also getting across before Justin Rodrigues stepped his way across for a 10-point lead at the break.
De La found a response through Watere and Tre Fotu against the run of play to remain in the contest, but second-half tries to Levi Pascoe, Luke Chalker and Brock Sepulveda were enough the seal the win despite Watere's second-half hat-trick.
It made it two losses on the bounce for De La having been touched up 40-14 by Thirroul in their previous outing, a run that's seen them concede 80 points in their past two games. It's a trend Manahan says his side will need to address quickly.
"It is concerning, it's a big attitude shift we need to make," Manahan said.
"I thought we started all right but, again, we just shot ourselves in the foot with mistakes. We think we have ourselves in the game and then we just end up defending, set after and just leak easy points through fatigue.
"The most concerning part is, obviously how many points we are leaking, but how easy they're getting leaked. It's through the middle, not so much around the edges, but it's just weak. We put it down to just the mistakes and having to defend, set after set, shooting ourselves in the foot.
"Whatever happens, if we lose the ball or if we give away a penalty, you've got to turn up and defend and we didn't do that again. We kept coming at them and we scored points pretty easily, which was the most frustrating part. We just leaked them much easier.
"It's midseason so if you have a couple of losses you need to build off, we've got a little bit of time to get better and try and time it coming into finals, provided we're there at the end of the season.
"We've got Dapto next week and we need to get back in the winner's circle, obviously change what we've been going wrong in the last couple of weeks, and shift our attitude."
The tries flew similarly thick and fast elsewhere on Saturday, with Collegians beating Dapto 52-22 at home and Thirroul running up a 50-0 score against Corrimal at Ziems Park.
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Mitch Jennings
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
