Kelvin Tantrum is "excited" at the prospect of having a third successive season in charge of the Wairarapa-Bush Heartland championship rugby side. Tantrum's reappointment to the position of coach for 2010 has been confirmed by the Wairarapa-Bush Rugby Union board after the completion of the usual debriefing process and he islooking forward to the challenge of them improving on this year's sixth placing in the Meads Cup competition. Which in itself was a step above Tantrum's debut season in the coaching role when Wairarapa-Bush failed to qualify for the Meads Cup playoffs and were eliminated in the semi-finals of the secondary Lochore Cup series. Tantrum's optimism that even better things are to come next season is based around three factors. First is the knowledge that luck did not always go the way of Wairarapa-Bush in their latest Heartland campaign. At least two of their losses could have been victories but for what Tantrum diplomatically calls "interesting" decisions by match officials.Amongst their successes was a win over Wanganui who, of course, went on to outclass Mid-Canterbury in the Meads Cup decider. Secondly, Tantrum is convinced that lessons learnt during the 2009 campaign will be put to good use next year. A sentiment which makes sense when you consider no fewer than 17 squad members had not been part of the 2008 line-up, and the bulk of them were actually experiencing Heartland rugby for the first time. Thirdly, there are already indications that some of the hardened campaigners from previous years who were not part of the action this season, either because of injury or unavailability, will be back on deck, notably former skipper Joe Harwood, Dylan Higginson, James Bruce and Daniel Griffin. Tantrum, who will again have Neil Foote as his assistant coach, sees Wairarapa-Bush undertaking a similar build-up to their 2010 Heartland programme to what they had this year with lead-up matches being arranged against teams mostly of their own strength. And he is keen too for players keen to be involved on the representative scene to start their fitness programmes very early in the New Year so that by the time the club season starts in late March-early April they are ready to fire on all cylinders. "It will be the same old story........players who aren't prepared to put in the hard yards won't be there, simple as that," he said.
