Greece's newest club Thessaloniki Lions made a winning start in their opening game in the domestic club championship.

The Lions scored three tries in a 24-20 win at Mecedones Evosmos.

Reigning champions Athens, unbeaten in three years of competition, extended their winning run with a convincing 31-8 win over Iraklis in Thessaloniki.

The other game scheduled for the opening round of competition between Colossus Rhodes and Athens Spartans did not take place as the Athens team failed to make the trip to the Dodecanese.

Sportingreece.com understands that Spartans tried to have the game rescheduled but the federation's championship committee will rule on whether the match will be replayed or awarded to Rhodes.

The Lions - made up largely of the now defunct Spartakos club that contested the first three championships - made a terrific start to their campaign.

Often under the cosh against Evosmos, they were forced to defend deep on the line but produced some stubborn tackling to deny the home side.

Lions scored two tries in the first half through full-back Sotiris Batianis and loosehead prop Konstantinos Evangelopoulos. Fly-half Antonis Lalaounis converted both and added a penalty to open up a 17-3 at the interval.

Evosmos, however, came back strongly in the second half with tries from Tamas Tsakalidis, Sotiris Nozantze and Teimouraz Gkigkolasvili. Bekouari Beka, who had scored a first half penalty, could only convert one of them and lock forward Stavros Bochoris' try, converted by Lalaounis, sealed the game for the Lions.

"It was a great day for us, a really tough game but we held on for the win. Now we have to keep it up for the rest of the season," said try-scorer Evangelopoulos.

The prop, however, claimed that the celebrations were kept to a very sober level.

"We just had some hot coffee and some food. I don't think our stomachs could have handled beer," claimed the prop.

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Athens, meanwhile, missing at least five players who helped them to last season's championship, proved that they are again setting the standards as they produced five tries in their win over Iraklis.

"They are still the team to beat in Greece," said Iraklis' coach Patrick Sawers.

"Their combined fitness, structure and team work came through and pulled us in in the second half mostly.

"The strong points for us were that we played from the heart, never gave up, they had to work hard to get through us and - I am sure they would admit themselves - we scrummaged them off the park. Well done to a superior team though."

Iraklis actually got the first points on the board thanks to a penalty after ten minutes from Georgos Kouroumichakis. But Athens came back and five minutes later Kostas Karandreas touched down for the first try.

The conversion went astray but Miriani Oroladze was on target five minutes later to bang over the extras after front row forward Vangelis Nastas muscled over for the second try.

Battling work from Iraklis made sure they only turned around trailing 3-12 and it was five minutes into the second half before Athens scored again, this time through international centre Georgos Tsatsaronis.

Iraklis closed the gap to 8-17 when Marios Goumagias went over for a try but Athens cranked up the pace adding further tries from veteran prop Kostas Tsampaos and Nikos Mavreas who successfully converted both.

The seventh club in the championship Attica Springboks will open their campaign in round two.