While their opening round match may go down in the books as a loss, there’s a lot to be excited about Wangaratta City’s senior men’s squad.

Taking to the park for the first time this year against a tough Albury City team, the Devils held their own initially before being worked out, eventually going down 2-6.

With a youthful team missing some key players, Wangaratta held City at bay, repelling and counterpunching through the first 20 minutes, before a conceded goal opened the floodgates.

After Albury scored in the 20th minute, the tide rose, scoring twice more to make it 0-3 inside the first half.

Lorenzo Cecchini found the back of the net on the eve of half-time, but the Devils were up against it and needed a monster second half to save the game.

Unfortunately, Albury’s class and pressure were too great for Wangaratta to go with, despite a late consolation goal to Fraser D’Agostino.

Senior coach Vitaly Leschen said they were missing a few key players and were taught a lesson by a strong outfit.

“We always knew going in [Albury] City is going to be one of the best teams in the league, no doubt in my mind about that,” he said.

“I thought for probably the first 20 minutes of the game we were shaping up well, we had a game plan to sit back and let them have possession and try and nullify scoring opportunities.

“For 20 minutes that was working very well and I was very confident we were going to get into half-time in a position where in the second half we could look to press on a little bit, but unfortunately we copped one goal, then whether it was a lack of experience, leadership, my messaging or what, but that one goal from our response quickly turned into three goals, and pretty much at that point the game was done, which was disappointing.”

While the scoreline may make for grim viewing, Leschen said there was plenty of positives to take from the encounter.

“I’m very confident this will be the lowest point of the year, we’ll be up from here - I don’t see, barring injuries and other things, that we’re going to cop another result like that this year,” he said.

“There were young boys, I think our backline was 18 years old on average, we had five 17- or 18-year-olds playing on the Sunday.

“There is a lot of talent at Wangaratta City at the moment – Jacob Saunders and Ash Primerano had standout games, Jacob particularly in his first senior game at right-back against probably the best left-winger in the league [Ben Sredojevic].

“If you look at the thirds and reserves results, thirds won 6-0 and reserves won 5-2, which means we’ve got quality all through the divisions this year.

“I’m still very confident we’re going to turn it around and have a lot better year than that result suggests.”

The club’s reserve women claimed victory 5-1 in their opening round match, while the over 35 men suffered a narrow 0-2 loss.