Wake-up call as Wanganui forced to play catch-up

If Wanganui's rugby team had done half the things right they had been training for, they would have beaten King Country in Saturday's Heartland Championship rugby match at Te Kuiti, says coach Milton Haig.
Haig was discontented after the rain-drenched 23-all draw because he believed the match was there for the taking.
"I'm not happy. If we'd done half the things the way we should have, we would have won it," Haig said.
"But, credit to the guys that they came back from being 17 points down."
That 17 points came in the first 12 minutes of the match when Wanganui seemed "glazed" by the onslaught of the weather which hit just a minute or so before match time.
"We didn't wake up. We just weren't doing the things we've trained for ? we weren't holding on to the pill, and their forwards beat us up basically in that first quarter," Haig said.
"We started to get some ascendancy in that second part of the half, but we were still playing poorly ? we were playing bad rugby out there. "We were not interested in the ball and that caused problems, and there was a whole 40 when we never really looked after our captain (halfback Denning Tyrell). He came under a lot of pressure and that was one of our issues as well."
Haig says his side didn't adjust well to the weather. "The weather conditions obviously didn't suit us, but at some stage we've got to learn to play wet weather rugby.
We played poorly for that 20 minutes and were playing catch-up footie from then on."
Haig refused to criticise referee Matt Stanish for several 50-50 decision which went King Country's way.
"You can't blame the referee ? he wasn't the one dropping passes, or the one going away from the game plan. We have to take it on the chin. We ended-up getting a good lesson on who wants to win the game the most ? although we fought back well and were lucky to come away with that draw.
"In the last five minutes we had a couple of opportunities to win it and did the wrong things. We went well away from what we had been training for and trusting our systems. We reverted back to one-off stuff and just club rugby."
So, he says, "there's plenty of work to do. It's a wake-up call ? I'm sure they won't be too interested in reading about themselves in the paper or looking at their pictures this week?.."
Pool leader Steelform Wanganui plays the second-placed team Horowhenua Kapiti at Cooks Gardens on Saturday.