The President's Cup was deservedly won by Renegades who beat a weakened but determined Police XV at National Sports Club yesterday.

Police were missing some key players, particularly Ian McLelland and Gareth Davies. Davies is likely to miss the first half of the season with a dislocated elbow incurred in last weekend's Sandys Boat Club Trophy.

Both sides quickly got to terms with the new laws, especially the offside law where several penalties had been given on Saturday in the second XV games.

Initially, Renegades were dissentious to the referee and gave several needless penalties away. The Renegades pack controlled most of the play in the first half, although a few individual performances from Danny Cozens and Sean Field thwarted some determined Renegades attacks.

Field was guilty early in the game of a couple of late tackles but soon settled down and scored a good try after some exciting forward play. Although both sets of forwards had an equal share of the set-pieces, the Renegades pack provided much quicker, cleaner possession from second-phase play, which gave new outside half Lawrence Moore a chance to use his running skills.

Moore set up some good attacks and with the elusive Dave Taylor in support, caused havoc amongst a relatively inexperienced Police backline.

Alan Oliver nevertheless steadied his Police backs with some good tackles and some gutsy runs. Taylor scored a good individual try in the first half, which ended up at 18-0 to Renegades.

Pat Jones had followed a good kick ahead by Moore to touch down in the corner with Moore kicking two penalties and a conversion to complete the first half.

Police got their act together in the second half and a couple of forward drives ended in Cozens bulldozing his way over for a try.

Field also scored a try late in the second half but unfortunately it was too little too late for Police.

Teachers 47, Mariners 5 David Cook had a brilliant game as Amstel Player of the Week as Teachers overwhelmed Mariners in the opening game.

Teachers' forwards dominated play and Cook in particular was very quick on the untidy line-out ball of Mariners and also scored a good try after winning a ball against the head when the score was 12-5.

It is quite amazing how he managed to score the try after being buried in the centre of the scrum.

Mariners never looked like scoring in the game and must surely concentrate their efforts on picking their best first XV. Several of their previous day's second XV looked decidedly better than their first XV colleagues.

For Teachers, Andrew Correia harassed the opposition and looked to be going for the scrum-half berth in the national team. He scored a brilliant individual try after 18 minutes with the score at 5-0 by weaving his way through the opposition, scoring near the posts. Teachers' forwards showed much improvement on last year in the second phase where they rucked exceptionally well. Sadly, Teachers lost Scott Correia with an old hamstring injury and Henry Adderley substituted well and played like a veteran on the wing.

Other first-half scores included a try by Nick Ball, who had been moved to the wing. Andre Simons converted two tries to bring the first-half score to 19-5.

In the second half, although Mariners pressured the Teachers for several minutes, Teachers' backs were resolute in defence and after 15 minutes Michael Montgomery made a good break in the centre of the field to find Tim White in support, who unselfishly gave a scoring pass to captain Alvin Harvey for a try under the posts.

Simons again converted to bring the score to 26-5. Despite some good clearance kicks by Mark Pettingale, Teachers continued to pressurise Mariners and the best try came from a determined run by Anthony Cupidor. He was stopped inches from the try line by a terrific tackle by the Mariners full-back, resulting with both players leaving the field with head injuries.

John Edwards was in close support to pick the ball up and score under the posts.

There were further tries by Montgomery and Simons, with Simons converting both bringing his tally for the day to 17 points.

Next weekend pits both winners of yesterday's games, Renegades v Teachers, in what should be a close encounter.