Both Brothers and Cloncurry had won their opening round fixtures and both had the bye in the opening two rounds so this was an intriguing fixture to see who would be best placed to challenge premiers Town.

And it was the visitors from the Curry who drew first blood when centre Leslie Gallagher crossed after just five minutes and they added the extras to lead 6-0.

The Curry then had chances to extend their lead but sloppy handling let them down.

It took 16 minutes for Brothers to respond with their first try and for the first half hour it remained a tight arm wrestle.

On 32 minute a Curry error led to a penalty in good position for Brothers and they capitalised to lead 10-6 before a length of the field run a few minutes later made it 16-6.

Cloncurry raised their game in the dying seconds of the half to get back to within a converted try to leave matters at 16-10 at the break.

They drew first in the second half to level the scores but Brothers won the ball from the restart and promptly scored again to lead 20-16.

The back and forth of the early stages of the half continued with another Curry try to deadlock matters again at 20-20. This was after a penalty for offside when a Brothers player was sinbinned for what looked like backchat.

But it was the 12 men who rallied in the next 10 minutes scoring two unanswered tries to lead 30-20.

With both sides back to 13 they knew the next score was crucial and it was Brothers who celebrated what looked like a match winning lead of 34-20 with a quarter of an hour remaining.

But when they fumbled a high ball in the sun, the Curry scored and two minutes later bagged another to suddenly make it a four-point ballgame with 10 to go.

At the seven minute mark, Brothers stole the ball off their opponent deep inside his own territory – illegally cried Cloncurry, but no it was fair ruled the ref – and promptly landed the ball over the line to make it 40-30.

Curry had one more chance grabbing the ball from a short kick but Brothers defend withstood the final onslaught to claim a big victory.

Final score Brothers 40, Cloncurry 30.

In the other game Wanderers edged out Black Stars 24-22.