Wairarapa-Bush head coach Mark Rutene admits he and assistant Paddy Gough have some thinking to do before their team's opening match in the 2012 Heartland rugby championship at Memorial Park, Masterton, this Saturday.
They have the job of finalising a starting line-up to take on South Canterbury and, after huge44-16 and 51-17 wins over fellow Heartland sides Poverty Bay and Horowhenua-Kapiti respectively over the past two weekends, their problem is who to leave out.
"It's a nice headache to have ... most of the guys have put their hands up and shown they can play at that level and that's what you want," Rutene said.
At the same time, however, Rutene is quick to emphasise he expects South Canterbury to provide much sterner opposition than any of the sides Wairarapa-Bush have met during their lead-into the Heartland programme.
"This is the real thing now, there's a whole lot more to play for when championship points are at stake. They [South Canterbury] are always tough to bowl, they'll be as fired up as we are."
Reflecting on the latest success over Horowhenua-Kapiti, Rutene was happy with the way in which Wairarapa-Bush lifted their effort in the second spell after being guilty of too many basic handling and passing errors in the first.
"We did start off with a few new combinations and I think that showed," he said. "The accuracy took awhile to come, there were a few wild passes and we spilled too much ball. There were probably two or three tries which went begging."
Rutene also conceded some of Wairarapa-Bush's defensive work was not as clinical as it would need to be in championship matches.
On the plus side, the pace and flair shown by their outside backs was again a highlight of the Wairarapa-Bush effort. In Cameron Hayton, Nathan Hunt and Nick Olson, they have players with genuine speed and midfielders Jesse McGilvary, Titapu Pairama-Lewington and Michael Te Whare are no slugs in that department either.
It was obvious the versatility of Glen Walters, who impressed at fullback and first-five, is set to be a major plus along with the different styles of the two halfbacks, Matt O'Connor and Inia Katia - O'Connor being more the swift passer and link man and Katia the elusive opportunist.
Heartening, too, for Wairarapa-Bush is the depth in the loose forwards where No8 Jim Temoci and flankers Johan van Vliet and James Goodger have excellent back-up in Johnnie McFadzean, Tom Fleming and Rupeni Tamani.
