Moses Mbye has hailed the new-found calm of his Canterbury halves partner Josh Reynolds.

By Mbye’s own admission the duo struggled as a scrumbase combination at the end of the last NRL season as the Dogs battled through the latter stages of 2015, after Trent Hodkinson suffered a season ending wrist injury.

Mbye and and Reynolds were preferred by coach Des Hasler as the future halves at Belmore, with Hodkinson moving to Newcastle ahead of 2016.

Just why was in evidence in the Bulldogs’ easy 28-6 win over Manly at Brookvale Oval on Friday night.

The duo was able to take full advantage of their forward’s dominance and notching up two try assists each.

“Josh seemed very calm and collected. He took control of that game and if he can continue to build on that throughout the next 25 rounds then he’ll have a very good season,” Mbye said.

“He’s a very good player, he’s won an Origin series and been in grand finals and he’s definitely not inexperienced. In a way to help my game he’s a great asset to me.

“He knows what he’s doing and he’s a dominant player which is going to help me enormously.”

Mbye admitted after the disappointing end to least season, he and Reynolds had been working overtime on their combination in the pre-season.

“We took a lot out of that, we didn’t finish last year the way we wanted to finish and we are probably responsible for that. We became pretty optimistic going forward about building a good platform,” Mbye said.

“We spent five months together in the off-season and put in a lot of hours together. The expectations are high, as they should be. I think we have a lot to work on going forward but we’re both pretty pleased with that.

“We’ll get better as time goes on. The more games we play together the better we’ll get.”