Rugby
Wairarapa-Bush head coach Mark Rutene was pleased with all but the last 20 minutes of Wairarapa-Bush's performance in their 39-20 loss to Wanganui in the Steel Cup representative rugby fixture at Wanganui on Wednesday.
It was only in the last quarter that Wairarapa-Bush surrendered the lead to the home team who took advantage of deficiencies in the Wairarapa-Bush defensive structure to race away for a comfortable win.
"We missed too many tackles in the final quarter and they were good enough to capitalise," Rutene said. "But until then, we had been very competitive, there wasn't a lot in it at all."
Encouragement from the Wairarapa-Bush loss can be taken from the fact they were missing seven players through injury or work commitments and some of those having game time hadn't even trained with the team so there was always likely to be more communication and combination hassles than normal.
"Some of the guys had little, or no, knowledge of our systems and that's tough on them, and the team," Rutene said. "Considering everything, we coped pretty well, it could have been a lot worse."
For Rutene and assistant coach Paddy Gough, this was their last chance to trial players before naming their Heartland championship squad. Two who probably nailed down their spots after being on the fringe beforehand were lock Clarke Butcher and prop Finnbarr Kerr-Newall. Butcher took down more than his share of good lineout ball and was mobile about the paddock while Kerr-Newall anchored a solid scrum and also shone in general play.
In the backs, the pressure was on the experienced Byron Karaitiana to show his injury problems were behind him and he made every post a winner.
Usual halfback Inia Katia was an absolute livewire when tried on the wing and centre Paul Tiko was another who probably did enough to ease himself into the Heartland squad.
Tiko did come out of the game with a sore ankle but is expected to recover quickly while first-five Glen Walters, who was his usual steady self, injured a shoulder and will probably be sidelined for a couple of weeks.
Rutene and Gough have no definite date for when their Heartland team will be named but Rutene said it was probably at least three weeks away.
On the club front, Gladstone's hopes of making it to the Tui Cup premier division semifinals will be on the line when they play Eketahuna under lights at Gladstone today, kicking off at 7.30pm.
If Gladstone can pull this one off, they will move to within one win of fourth-placed East Coast (who have the bye this weekend) on the points table with two preliminary round matches still to be played. But if they lose, their chances of making up the lost ground will be severely eroded.
Eketahuna too will have plenty to play for. A win for them and a semifinal spot is virtually in the bag. Their objective will be to dominate the forward exchanges to the extent the Gladstone backs have to exist on scraps and they are quite capable of doing exactly that.
The other three premier division games are being played tomorrow and the smart money will be on front-runners Pioneer to beat Marist at Memorial Park and second-placed Greytown - even without Walters - to beat Carterton at Greytown but the Martinborough v Bush Sports encounter at Martinborough should be a close go. Both teams look out of the reckoning for the semis so are likely to throw caution to the wind.