Teachers continued their undefeated league run over the weekend, beating second placed Mariners handsomely at National Sports Club.

The Reds took full advantage of a Mariners team missing key players such as Josh MacGavern and Gavin Corcoran, and dominated the game.

The match featured some fine individual performances -- Teachers centre Nathan Brown scoring 17 points whilst Alvin Harvey scored two of the team's eight tries.

Teachers got off to a quick start with a Brown penalty kick after Mariners were caught offside right under the posts.

Soon after Heath (Butch) Robinson was unlucky not to cross the try line when he couldn't quite get his hands to a flying pass from Bobby Hurdle.

But Teachers made up for that miss a few minutes later when Harvey got his first try of the game.

A quick throw-in and good support play eventually put the ball in Harvey's hands, and he went through a couple of Mariners players before putting the ball down under the posts. Brown kicked the conversion, taking the score to 10-0.

The domination continued as finely timed passes from Chris Naylor and Brown put Robinson in an attacking position.

The speedy winger beat his opposite number for pace to take the ball over the try-line once more, the successful conversion taking the score to 17-0.

Two more tries came before the break from Ashley Redmond and Jeff Sangster, leaving the score at 27-0.

Mariners wouldn't allow Teachers to hijack the game completely and the second half proved more productive for those in green.

Mariners, in fact, were first to score with scrumhalf Simon Hirstenstein going over the line after a quick throw-in caught Teachers off guard.

Teachers came back strongly with a Brown try in the next move of the game and any hope of a Mariners comeback was sunk when their flyhalf Keith Hodgkins was sin-binned after referee Dennis Dwyer spotted some foul play in the middle of a ruck.

With Mariners down to 14 men, Teachers took advantage and Naylor and Freedom Burrows went over the goal-line to get their names on the scoreboard.

Harvey then picked up a loose ball from the half-way line and ran half the length of the pitch for his second try. With Brown's conversions, that took the score to 53-5.

It was Mariners who had the last word, however, with two tries from Nat Cooke and Howie Elliot making the final score 53-17.

Mariners captain, Jeff Merker said despite the result he wasn't disappointed with his team's performance.

"It was a tough game. We were short a few key players, but I think we gave it our all and had a pretty good match,'' he said.

"We had some spurts and managed to score a few tries, but we had a little trouble keeping it consistent.'' Merker said Teachers were on a roll this season and the real battle in the league would be further down the standings.

"I think that they are obviously the dominating side, but we have a good run when we go up against Police so I think it will be pretty close for second and third place,'' he said.

Police, meanwhile, beat a struggling Renegades side 34-17 in the other game of the day with tries from Tom Steinhoff, Jonathan Cassidy and Alex Rollin.