Coach happy with Cup playoffs draw

Hansells Wairarapa-Bush coach Graham Cheetham is happy with the tentative draw handed out to his side for the Meads Cup playoffs in the 2007 Heartland rugby championship.
They are away to Buller this coming Saturday, will host North Otago on September 29 and will be away again to Wanganui on October 6.
An NZRFU spokesman said changes to that draw would only be made if flight schedules could not be organised, something which would be known by today.
Cheetham would, of course, have preferred his side to have two home games against the three pool B qualifiers but their 36-25 beating by Mid-Canterbury in the last of their pool A matches ruined any chance of that happening.
That result left Mid-Canterbury equal top of the pool A table with Wairarapa-Bush on 15 points but ahead of them through the countback format which seeded teams with equal points on the outcome of their individual clash.
Which in turn gave Mid-Canterbury two home playoff games and Wairarapa-Bush just the one.
It is important to note too that teams go into the playoffs with their pool points intact.
North Otago, with 23 points, therefore have the inside running to make the semi-finals while Buller will start on 17 points, Mid-Canterbury, Wairarapa-Bush and Wanganui, all on 15 points, and King Country on 14 points.
Taking that into account the first round of playoff matches takes on extreme importance for all but North Otago for whoever of the other five semi-final contenders lose will immediately be on the back foot in terms of qualifying for that part of the competition.
Playing Buller at home would have been the number one choice for Wairarapa-Bush in their playoff schedule.
And playing them at Westport would have been second on the list.
For while Buller were unquestionably the surprise packets in pool B with their four wins 19-15 over Wanganui, 38-7 over East Coast, 15-13 over Poverty Bay and 20-18 over South Canterbury and just the one defeat (20-51 to North Otago) it is still hard to escape the feeling that come the playoffs both North Otago and Wanganui, who have handled the pressures of playoff rugby before, will provide sterner opposition.
And to follow that theme recent form suggested that if Wairarapa-Bush were to have any chance of ending North Otago's unbeaten run home advantage would be crucial to them but not necessarily so against Wanganui, who were at home when Wairarapa-Bush beat them in the inaugural Heartland championship grand final last season.
"It's not perfect but it's about as close to it as we could hope for," Cheetham said of the playoff draw. "But there's no easy games, every one is going to be a huge challenge for us."
Cheetham said Wairarapa-Bush would not be dwelling at any great length on the reasons for their defeat by Mid-Canterbury in the lead-up to the Buller game as he believes it was simply a case of Mid-Canterbury playing the better rugby on the day.
"It wasn't the sort of game where you could a make a lot of excuses, they were the best Heartland team we have played all season to date and we couldn't hold them out, that was pretty much all there was to it," he said.
"It wasn't that we played badly, more that they played very well."
Happily, Cheetham expects three of his big guns to be fully fit for the Buller match.
Utility back Simanu Simanu took no part in the Mid-Canterbury fixture because of a groin strain, hooker Joe Harwood had a stomach upset going into the game and had to be replaced at halftime and lock Tomasi Kedrabuka's injury meant he played only the second spell, and that on the side of the scrum.
It seems very unlikely though that Cheetham and his coaching partner Lofty Stevenson will draft in some of the more impressive players from the Wairarapa-Bush B's, who have had a couple of big wins recently, to perhaps strengthen their resources.
Cheetham didn't entirely dismiss the suggestion, saying that he and Stevenson would be sitting down over the next 24 hours to discuss their next move, but he said loyalty to current squad members was still likely to take precedence in the selection process.
"We did finish equal top in our pool so you can't really say the players have let us down, can you?" he said.
"And it's hard to assess the opposition the B's have had compared to that we have been playing & that's all got to be taken into account too."