Heartland squad named on Sunday

The Wairarapa-Bush squad to contest the 2008 Heartland rugby championship will be named on Sunday.
Coach Kelvin Tantrum is deliberately waiting until after club finals day at Memorial Park on Saturday to finalise the 22 players who will front up in non-championship games against Poverty Bay (August 2) and Wellington B (August 9) before commencing their Heartland campaign with a home match against West Coast on August 16.
"We want to leave the door open until the last moment & there's always the chance that someone will come out of the woodwork in the finals and say, hey pick me," Tantrum said.
Whether Wairarapa-Bush will use the allowable three "imports" in Heartland games also won't be decided until basically the last moment.
Tawa utility back Junior Togia, who was part of the Meads Cup-winning squad of 2006, and Upper Hutt lock James Measor are definite starters but whether a third player from outside the local region will be involved is still very much a work in progress.
Tantrum said he and assistant coach Mike Robinson had been "pretty interested" in a promising loose forward from the Wellington region but he was wanted for that province's colts side so he was no longer a prospect.
"We do have another couple of possibilities in mind but right now we're not sure about their availability either," Tantrum said. "We may go with what we've got anyway and just have the two (imports)."
Boosting the loose forward stocks is the recall to the Wairarapa-Bush training squad of Martinborough flanker Jared Hawkins, who was one of the better performers in last season's Heartland team and who looks to be over the injury problems which have plagued him this year.
Hawkins had a big game on both attack and defence for Martinborough in their senior first division club semi-final loss to East Coast at Whareama last weekend.
Also pleasing for Wairarapa-Bush is that two of their more experienced campaigners over the past decade in Marist midfield back Nathan Couch and Gladstone halfback James Bruce are definitely available for this season's Heartland programme.
That is especially good news in the case of Bruce as the halfback resources have been thinned by the withdrawal of Carterton's Justin Lett through injury and East Coast's Zeb Aporo for personal reasons.
Tantrum and Robinson are justifiably treating the non-championship fixture with Poverty Bay as the first true test of their team's Heartland prospects after two early matches with a Wellington XV and a Hawke's Bay XV ended in whopping defeats.
But they are still anticipating formidable opposition, and rightly so after the Bay's strong showing in their recent Ranfurly Shield challenge with Auckland.
They conceded just over 50 points there and a week later Auckland beat last season's Heartland champions, North Otago, in another Shield match by a three-figure margin.
Tantrum said those results indicated Poverty Bay would be a force to be reckoned with on the Heartland stage in 2008 and, as such, they would provide a good gauge as to where Wairarapa-Bush were placed in that respect.
"It's important we play well against them, we need to get some momentum going before the championship gets underway," he said.
Meanwhile, the Wairarapa College first XV scored a surprisingly comfortable 29-5 win over Dannevirke in their latest match in the Manawatu secondary schools competition. Glenn Terry, Teihana Brown, Corey McFadzean and Thomas Kainuku scored tries with Cody Whittaker kicking three conversions and Rehi Brown one penalty goal.
Wairarapa College play Hato Paoro College at Wairarapa College this Saturday, starting at 12.30pm.