Orange City's Josh Coyte leading the BOIDC player of the year race

On that occasion, he scored just the six runs for a Centrals side which went down to Orange City in the Royal Hotel Cup.

Fast-forward to today and Coyte is a Warrior himself and loving life at the top of the order.

"My younger brother (Lachlan Coyte) played a lot with City growing up and Brett Causer was really good to him," he said.

"I've also known Lachie Skelly for a long time and used to live with him down in Wagga. He told me he was moving to Orange and he was figuring out who to play for and I told him 'City, 100 per cent'. I then got a bit of FOMO."

Having been a university student in the Riverina city, Coyte made the decision to move off campus, which left him without a permanent place to live come summer. This, combined with a desire to make a return to the game, prompted a move back to Orange.

"I'm enjoying being closer to home and playing again with people I grew up playing with. It's been good fun," he added.

But not even he could have anticipated the success that would follow.

Now opening the batting for City, Coyte has amassed 405 runs at an average of 31 across all competitions and is the fifth leading runs scorer in the Bathurst and Orange Inter District Cricket competition with 272.

"I'm probably hitting the ball the best I've hit it in a long time," he said.

"I've changed it up a bit, doing a bit more drills, working after training with young Matty McKenna and taking some drills off how Lach takes them in Sydney."

Having also taken three wickets and snared six catches, Coyte finds himself atop the BOIDC player of the year standings with nine points after eight rounds, two ahead of ORC's Hugh Parsons and Rugby Union's Jameel Qureshi.

"I was very surprised," he said when asked about his table-topping performance.

"I actually got tagged in the Facebook post by another fella because I didn't even see it. I didn't expect that at all."

But while Coyte's individual performance has been one to marvel at, his side still have a bit of work to do if they want to play in the finals this season.

"There's always room for improvement in any team, coming first through to last," he said of his team's fifth place standing.

"At the end of the day, it's just a bit of cricket and you're just doing what you can for the team. My role as open stick is just see that new ball off and give the most opportunity to our middle order to take it deep.

"Hopefully we can capitalise on those moments in the back end of the season and we'll see where it takes us."

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