Sebastopol was among the premiership favorites heading into the season, but it proved no match for Buninyong in the opening round of the Ballarat District Bowls Division Premier Saturday Pennant.
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The Kookaburras managed just one rink success against Buninyong after finishing as the highest-placed Ballarat team in Geelong-Ballarat Premier Bowls league last season.
Many pegged the club as the team to beat in the reformed Saturday premier competition, but it was unable to overcome Buninyong which secured a 68-60 win.
Buninyong's Ian Voigt said it was a great win, but refused to get carried away so early in the season.
"Sebas have been one of the yardsticks of the premier competition for quite a few years and we regarded it as a pretty good win," he said.
"It always gives confidence to win the first round because sometimes one loss can become two, which can become three and so on.
"We're off to a good start, so now if we have a setback we'll still have a good sense of confidence from having snagged points in the first game."
Buninyong began strongly with skipper Mick Storey paving the way for success with a 13-shot victory over Anthony Holland's rink. Brian Wilcock's outfit enjoyed a nine-shot win of its own, while Ian Warner was the only winning skipper for Sebastopol in a tough day for the club.
"With there being only three rinks it's now really important to have a couple of your rinks which are really solid all day," Voigt said.
"It's now very difficult to recover from a bad start, so getting off to a good start across the board held us in good stead as the game wore on."
Voigt said said he expected Saturday's win to be a sign of things to come.
"We were one of the mid to lower ranking sides, but we were pretty happy last year and thought we were pretty competitive for the most part," he said.
"We knocked off a couple of the top teams in the latter part of the season and we expect to be pretty competitive through the year."
Elsewhere on Saturday, Victoria made a statement by knocking off last year's division one premiers Ballarat Memorial Sports 71-67 at Alfredton.
Creswick enjoyed a comfortable win over Learmonth, Ballarat snuck home by a solitary shot in the battle with Central Wendoure, while Webbcona was too good for Mt Xavier.
