Wairarapa-Bush head coach Mark Rutene has his feet firmly planted on the ground leading into his team's opening Heartland championship rugby match against North Otago at Oamaru on Saturday.
That much is clear from his own analysis of his team's 34-19 win over Horowhenua-Kapiti in the last of the warm-up
games at Otaki last Saturday.
While pleased with the end result, Rutene was not exactly waxing lyrical about the manner in which it was achieved.
"We were okay in patches but we made too many basic mistakes to feel too happy about things," he said yesterday. "A win is a win and we'll take it but we need to lift in some areas, no doubt about that."
Frustrating Rutene and assistant coach Paddy Gough were unhappy about the number of times Wairarapa-Bush lost possession in contact situations, the struggle to win their own lineout ball and the number of missed tackles in the backs.
"You couldn't fault the intensity but too often we did the simple things poorly," Rutene said. "We got away with it this time but you can't keep doing that and expect to win."
The Otaki match did, however, throw up some selection headaches for Rutene and Gough when they come to finalise their starting line-up for the Oamaru trip.
Players like hooker Jamie Hunt, lock Wiremu Grace, No 8 Johnie McFadzean, halfback Joseph Sio, first-five Byron Karaitiana and wing Paul Tiko all did enough against Horowhenua-Kapiti to suggest that rather than be likely bench-sitters, as might have originally been thought, they could be in contention for a starting spot.
And further complicating matters is that back rower Nathan Iro and wing Nathan Hunt have both recovered sufficiently enough from their injury hassles to be in the reckoning as well.
Rutene readily concedes he and Gough have some dilemmas to confront.
"Yes, there were some players who clearly improved their chances at Levin and some who didn't," he said.
"There's clearly a few places where decisions have to be made but that's a nice problem to have."
North Otago will start favourites for Saturday's encounter but Rutene has confidence in his squad.
"We've actually played some of our best rugby over the last couple of seasons when we have been on the road so that's something which isn't worrying us at all," he said
