Cheetham takes positives from defeat

Wairarapa-Bush coach Graeme Cheetham was "reasonably encouraged" by his team despite their 49-0 loss to a Wellington XV in the annual Jimmy Cotter Memorial Trophy match at Memorial Park, Masterton on Tuesday.
Cheetham readily concedes there is still plenty of work to do before a successful defence of their Heartland championship title can be predicted but he believes the scope for improvement is enough to suggest his side should at least be competitive at that level.
"Considering we had just the one serious training run to get ready for Tuesday's game we didn't do too badly," he said. "You couldn't fault the enthusiasm and determination, we stuck at it right to the end."
Cheetham saw the main difference between the two sides being Wellington's ability to finish off their attacking movements, something his own side were unable to do. "We spent quite a period of time on their goal line, especially in the second half, and we didn't score, that was probably the most disappointing aspect of the whole game for us," he said.
Cheetham agrees the late withdrawls through injury of experienced campaigners, centre Simanu Simanu and lock Tomasi Kedarabuka, undoubtedly blunted his team's potency on attack.
"We struggled with our option taking there, we weren't decisive enough,' he said.
Cheetham considers fitness is another key issue which has to be addressed by his players.
Being able to sub on a regular basis had helped them get through Tuesday's action but there was no question in his mind that many of them were still well short of the fitness required to play in Heartland matches.
"We were having players coming off the field after just 20 minutes absolutely knackered and hopefully they will now go away and work hard in their own time to enhance that part of their game," he said.
Cheetham was pleasantly surprised, however, with the effort of the Wairarapa-Bush forwards in the vital set pieces of lineout and scrum.
"We only had about four scrums at training on Sunday so to hold our own there was very pleasing and while we stuffed up a few lineouts we didn't do too badly there either," he said.
Cheetham is well aware the next two non-championship games against Air NZ teams Hawke's Bay and Manawatu will provide a much bigger test for Wairarapa-Bush than did a Wellington XV which mainly consisted of that union's most promising talent and which consequently lacked much in the way of experience itself.
But he is looking forward to the challenges those matches will bring, saying they will help "harden up" his players leading into their Heartland campaign.
"They'll give us a good gauge as to which players can respond positiively to pressure and which can't," he said.