The Lions had entered the derby on the back of two gritty defeats to Illawarra Premier League title contenders Albion Park and Olympic, before suffering a disappointing 3-0 loss to Tarrawanna.

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On Saturday, Cringila left Macedonia Park with their first point in 2021.

"It was a good result for us. It's the first opportunity I've had this year to have everyone available. That was a good hit out for us, it was a really important point. It does feel like a win for us and it's nice to get off the mark and get our season started," Michlmayr said.

"They've got some quality players all over the field, and quality coming off the bench. We really stuck to our task and defended well, and our structures were pretty sound. It was nice to keep them to one goal, considering we'd leaked a few in the previous weeks.

"We can absolutely build on that performance, though we go into another tough one against Bulli next week. But we've been confident all the way through. We had a few narrow losses, that Olympic scoreline (4-1) was probably closer than the scoreboard suggested - we were a man down after 30 minutes. So we're really happy with the way we've started. It was disappointing against Tarrawanna, but it was good that we turned that around really quickly, and arrested that poor performance. The other ones were pretty strong though."