It was evident as they overcame a gallant Port Fairy in an entertaining Hampden league round two contest at Gardens Oval on Saturday, April 13.

Former AFL key position player Aaron Black kicked seven goals in the 16.10 (106) to 10.14 (74) victory.

Fellow tall Harry Ryan slotted three and boom recruit Ben Cunnington, playing mostly in attack, kicked two.

"Blacky and Cunners are super hard players to play on and super dynamic," O'Keefe said.

"They love playing together but I think what helps us in the forward line is we've added to our midfield as well.

"We've added some extra layers in there which allows a (Mitch) Bidmade, a Jackson Bell and a Jye Turland to play more forward as well.

"If the best defenders are going to Blacky and Cunners, we've also got the fifth-best defender on Jackson Bell which works really well for us."

Warrnambool led at every change in a contest where both sides had momentum and bold passages of play.

O'Keefe said it was pleasing to see the Blues respond every time the Seagulls, led by Kaine Mercovich in the midfield, tried to bridge the gap.

The back line stood up when needed with Sam Cowling playing a role on former teammate Jason Rowan, who kicked a team-high four goals.

"We had Oscar Pollock for Fletcher Timms today because we identified Oscar is a very good player but I thought Timmsy did an enormous job to the point I think Oscar ended up playing on the wing," O'Keefe said.

"Anthony McCarthy and Taylem Wason have been down there as backs, so we've changed half of our back line pretty quickly and you can see those three guys are mixing well together. They defend hard and they attack."

Port Fairy coach Dustin McCorkell said there were lessons to take from the Seagulls' first defeat of the season.

"We would've won quite a few (statistical) areas. We just let ourselves down with a bit of our team defence which left our backs a bit under the pump with one-on-ones," he said.

"We couldn't get that little run on. We were giving our forwards a chance by getting repeat entries but we didn't execute going into our forward line as well as we can."

McCorkell praised forward Matt Sully who kicked three goals and "looked strong in the air", the hard-working Mercovich and defender George Swarbrick who had the task on Cunnington.