Selection woes cook up tasty problem for coach

Wairarapa-Bush rugby head coach Mark Rutene finds himself with a nice problem to solve.

Rutene can only name 22 players for his team's first official match of the 2012 season with Horowhenua-Kapiti at the Cake Tin on May 26. And that means at least a few of those who impressed in the 30-25 defeat by New Zealand Universities on Wednesday will miss out.

And considering the fight shown by that Wairarapa-Bush squad on the back of a very limited preparation, deciding who gets the chop will be headache material for Rutene and assistant coach Paddy Gough.

"Most of the guys really stood up and showed they were capable of playing at a higher level," Rutene said.

"We wanted them go get stuck in right from the word go and they did exactly that. It was pretty gutsy stuff."

Especially pleasing for Rutene was that while eight changes were made at halftime, the high performance remained constant.

"Sometimes it takes players coming off the reserve bench awhile to get into the swing of things but that didn't happen this time, there was no noticeable drop at all."

Up front, the steadiness of the scrum, the aggressiveness of the mauling and the speed to the loose ball impressed Rutene.

And while there was the odd hassle at lineout time, he put that down to a lack of time for throwers and jumpers to get their combinations right.

The Wairarapa-Bush backs were lively in attack and showed more spark and flair than they did at any time last year.

Defensive lapses let Universities in for a couple of quick tries near halftime but, apart from that, the tackling was sound.

Rutene and Gough expect to name their squad for the Horowhenua-Kapiti match in about two weeks.