Reputations count for nothing in grand final

Reputations will count for nothing in the Wairarapa-Bush senior first division grand final rugby match between Marist and Gladstone at Memorial Park, Masterton this coming Saturday.
That's the message from Marist captain Patrick Rimene who has heard all the talk about how he and fellow long-time Wairarapa-Bush representative Nathan "Chopper" Couch are the "guts" of the Marist side and how Gladstone should have a winning advantage up front.
Rimene has been there, done that in grand finals rugby and he says the outcome invariably comes down to the team which wants it most on the day.
"I've been in matches where we were probably seen as the strongest side on paper but we weren't hungry enough on the day and lost," Rimene said.
"It's a one off game and you have to be up for it, otherwise you come second."
Rimene believes the publicity given him and Couch actually helps the Marist cause as it takes the pressure of their team-mates.
" It doesn't worry us at all because if they (the opposition) are so intent on closing us down they are leaving some very talented players alone, and we can turn that to our advantage," he said.
"Marist are not a two-man band, nowhere near it in fact."
Rimene isn't concerned either about any so-called deficiencies in the Marist pack.
He admits they struggled to make a big impact in the grading round of the first division series but reckons their improvement through the top six qualifying games and into the semi-final with Pioneer has made them Marist's biggest attribute.
"It's fair to say we don't have the size of most of the other packs but they are mobile and working extra well as a unit, they have stood up and been counted just when they needed to be," he said.
Rimene pointed to young lock Michael Hughes as being a prime example of the progress made by the Marist forwards over the latter part of the club season.
"He's just got better and better," Rimene said of Hughes.
"He gets us lineout ball and he has good speed about the paddock, he's not overly big for a lock but his workrate more than makes up for that."
Rimene also reckons two of the older hands in Ben Couch and Phil Aporo have been the unsung heroes of the Marist backline.
They have been consistently strong on both attack and defence and the bigger the occasion the better they seemed to play.
"They don't get overawed, they just go out there and do the business," he said.
Not surprisingly, Rimene is predicting a close, tense battle for Saturday's final with the two previous meetings between Marist and Gladstone this season highlighting how little there is between the two sides. Gladstone won the first of those matches 25-15 and Marist the second 24-20.
But he says he will be surprised if the game is any more physical for Marist than their semi-final against Pioneer, a game in which numerous "big hits" were made by both sides in defensive situations.
"I think they (Pioneer) are more physical than any other side, and having them in the semis was probably a help for us," he said. "They really tested that part of our game and I thought we came through it pretty well."
The fact that Marist got out to a commanding 27-5 lead in their semi but conceded three tries in the closing stages to win by just seven points might suggest they either tired badly or got complacent but Rimene reckons the fact Marist made wholesale changes to their playing line-up was perhaps the main contributing factor.
That and the fact that Pioneer were always the sort of team capable of creating tries out of nothing.
"Give Pioneer credit, they finished the game very strongly, but, yes, the changes made did mean we were struggling with combinations a bit and they (Pioneer) took advantage of that," he said.
Gladstone skipper Steve Wilkinson agrees his side were struggling to keep in touch with Eketahuna through the first half of their semi-final at Eketahuna with the home team 9-6 ahead at the break.
"We were maybe a bit lucky to be that close at halftime, they had given it to us through most of that half and probably deserved a bigger lead than that," Wilkinson said.
The second half, however, was a different story with Gladstone scoring ten unanswered points then, including the only try of the game.
His team's ability to lift their effort when it was needed most impressed Wilkinson and he is "pretty confident" that if they can play like that for the full 80 minutes against Marist then the grand final will go their way as well.
"It's just a matter of being consistent all the way through, slow starts can cost you a lot in games like this," he said. " We have the team to win but we need to be in the game right from the word go".
Wilkinson does though have huge respect for Marist, noting that they were amongst the front runners in both the grading round and top six qualifiers and therefore deserved their place in the grand final.
"They have plenty of experience in key areas and you can't afford to focus on any one part of their game, you have to keep an eye on them all over the paddock," he said.
Wilkinson sees Gladstone's struggle to make the semis after dominating the grading round as being a possible blessing in disguise as it meant that any over-confidence on their part was now and well and truly on the backburner.
"No one really gave us a decent beating but the losses did remind us what can happen when things don't go as well as they should", he said. "The last couple of games have been a test of character and we have come through, and that's got everybody feeling good about themselves."