The Sharks led from start to finish at Regional Stadium and were rarely threatened as they got an 18-nil lead in the first 15 minutes.

Sharks coach Dave Geary said it was good to get the win, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

"It was a good start to the season with the win," he said. "We did play really well in patches, but there's still a fair bit of work to do.

"At the start of the game, we probably played some of the best football I've seen the Sharks play, just in that 15 to 20 minutes, but then we just went away from the game plan."

Second-rower Ryan Long was named players' player in the game, scoring a hat-trick for the team, but Geary said the team's discipline with the ball denied them some easy tries.

"I think our discipline... being able to build pressure and doing that for a long period of time is what we need to focus on.

"The score line could've been a lot bigger if we were more disciplined and waited for their defence to crack, so that's what we will be focusing on going into next week's game."

The Mustangs got two quick tries just before half time to crawl back to an 18-12 half time score, but their slow start to the second half and low completion rate cost them the game.

Mustangs coach Anthony Cowan said the team will be focusing on their discipline after their loss to the Sharks.

"We just couldn't get out of our own end and we couldn't get to kicks, but that just happens in games and we learn from that.

"I'm just glad this type of stuff is happening in the first half of the season because we can build from this going forward."

Cowan said he was happy with the team's defensive efforts, despite the loss.

"We probably played good footy for about 25 minutes out of the whole 80, but I said to my boys that the first game is always the hardest, so I'm not expecting it to be clinical out there.

"I knew we were going to have forced errors and make mistakes, so it was just about building our game plan.

"Port just took advantage of our mistakes, which is what good teams do, but I'm not going to take anything away from my boys- I'm really proud of the way they defended, and that's going to be a big talking point this year, to just concentrate on our defence."

Port Macquarie Sharks will play Forster-Tuncurry Hawks next week, while Macleay Valley Mustangs get ready to take on Taree City Bulls.

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