“Now the message is, ‘that’s great, but that’s done’. It would be great to get that amount of people [watching] again, but it’s about raising our level with intensity, and getting our game sorted,” said Hamlin.
“Now we’ve got this new bunch of players – got some kids that, when they start Heartland, it will be their first provincial game.”
Regular loose forward and try-scorer against the Classics, Samu Kubunavanua, is unavailable with work commitments.
Among the injured veterans, it is still likely lock Peter-Travis Hay-Horton and hooker Alesana Tofa will not play until the start of Heartland, while backs Dane Whale and Timoci Seruwalu will resume some training duties next week.
Otherwise, all players are available, meaning a couple may miss out when the squad is officially announced on Friday morning, with Hamlin expecting them to jump on with other representative teams.
Throughout the Heartland campaign, there will be fixtures for the McFall Fuel Whanganui Barbarians, Whanganui Pasifika, Whanganui Māori and even the Northern sub-union team.
“We’ve got all these things, other avenues we can play games at, so there’s all sorts we can keep people playing when they’re not involved with us,” said Hamlin.
“That’s what we need them to be doing too; the guys that don’t make the team need to go away and be playmakers and run [the other] teams, and get tempo of games, because that’s what they’ll have to do if they come back up.”
With the coveted No 15 jersey open due to the departure of Tyler Rogers-Holden, Hamlin has a couple of options.
Adam Boult, with 14 games for Manawatū, covered the wing last Saturday while, in his return to the team for the first time since 2018, Harry Symes scored and laid on a couple of try-assists before handing over to debutant Chad Whale.
Hamlin was happy with the first-up efforts of imports Matt Picard at hooker and halfback Cody Mitchell.
“Matt at hooker did his core roles well, which is all we really want out of him - he was solid,” said Hamlin.
“We’ll see what that looks like on Saturday, adding scrumaging into the mix as well.
“Daniel Kauika played really well in that first 30-40 minutes, and then Cody came on with a lot of changes, so that makes it difficult.
“But he can add a bit of tempo to our game, pretty happy with both of them.”
Kickoff is 2.30pm.
