East Coast and Greytown will meet in the grand final of the Wairarapa-Bush Rugby Union's Tui Cup premier division competition at Memorial Park, Masterton, next weekend.
They took contrasting paths to the competition decider in their semifinal matches on Saturday, East Coast scoring a relatively comfortable 31-20 victory over Martinboroughat Martinborough and Greytown having to stave off a brave comeback from Gladstone before winning 23-20 at Greytown.
For the second successive weekend Wairarapa-Bush utility back Nick Olson scored a hat-trick of tries for East Coast in a game that produced eight tries in all, five of them to East Coast and three to Martinborough.
Greytown used the bitterly cold breeze well to lead Gladstone 20-3 at halftime but Gladstone struck back in the second half to even things up at 20-20.
First-five Rhys Lett landed his third penalty to put Greytown ahead 23-20 with less than 10 minutes to play and from there it was all on for young and old, Greytown desperately trying to deny their opposition ball by revolving play around their forwards and Gladstone doing everything they could to come up with the winning try.
In the end the Greytown tactics produced the desired result, a situation that gives coach Ritchie Robertson the chance to take them to a second premier division title, having been in that role when they won in 1992.
In the Hodder Steffert Cup premier division plate semifinals Eketahuna scored four tries to three but Carterton took the honours 28-22.
Meanwhile, Pioneer won by default from Bush Sports, who were unable to field a full complement of players.
The Shannahan Cup senior second division semifinals produced a comfortable 28-7 win to Rams over Marist, but Puketoi and Tuhirangi had a low-scoring thriller, Puketoi sneaking in 5-3.
