Cheetham takes blame for teams mistakes

Hansells Wairarapa-Bush coach Graham Cheetham is taking the blame for at least some of his team's mistakes in their 16-8 win over King Country in the Heartland championship rugby match played in Masterton on Saturday.
Cheetham believes the multitude of handling errors were mainly due to nervousness caused by the players being "over hyped" for the top-of-the-table pool A clash.
"You have to look in the mirror first when you start apportioning blame and, on reflection, I have to take some of the responsibility myself," Cheetham said. "The whole emphasis in training had been on how crucial this game was, and perhaps we overdid it in that respect. Everybody was on edge & we probably over-cooked them a bit."
Cheetham was happy, however, that even allowing for their error rate Wairarapa-Bush were able to thwart the King Country challenge in what he described as a "pretty messy and scrappy" match.
"At the end of the day we picked up four points and they didn't get any so we can't complain too much, can we?" he said.
Pleasing for Cheetham was the improved showing by Wairarapa-Bush in their defensive work around the fringes of the rucks and mauls, an area which had been a concern in the previous wins over West Coast and Thames Valley.
But not so pleasing was the room given hard-running King Country No.8 Ronnie Patea during his many surging bursts from the back of the scrum.
"He kept making big ground and that's something we need to look at," Cheetham said.
"We need to be quicker in our response to that type of attack."
There were occasions too when the delivery of possession to halfback Hamish McKenzie at scrum time lacked control with the ball tending to spurt out of unlikely channels.
Cheetham said the "overhyping" factor might have kicked in there too with considerable emphasis at training being given to King Country's reputation as a powerful scrummaging unit.
"We talked a lot about how we had to be competitive in the scrums and maybe the boys concentrated too much on providing a stable platform at the expense of other things," he said.
Cheetham saw the metreage made by the Wairarapa-Bush backs in attacking situations as a positive but he believes they could have been even more effective but for a habit for the ball carrier to go too far.
"They were just a bit keen at times & support was there but they didn't always look for it.".
Saturday's win guaranteed Wairarapa-Bush a place in the Meads Cup playoffs but it is unlikely to mean sweeping changes will be made to team personnel for the next pool game against poorly-performed Horowhenua-Kapiti at Levin this coming weekend.
Cheetham said "one or two" changes could happen but Wairarapa-Bush were keen to maintain their current momentum and they were mindful that Horowhenua-Kapiti were likely to rise to the occasion in what they would see as a "local derby."
"They (Horowhenua-Kapiti) always seem to give us a hard game and , quite honestly, we're not expecting anything different this time round," Cheetham said.