Credit to Wairarapa-Bush

Credit where credit is due.
Who at the start of the 2007 Heartland rugby championship would ever have thought Wairarapa-Bush would already be assured of a Meads Cup playoff berth after just three rounds of pool games?
More than that who would have predicted them not only being unbeaten after three games but opening up a massive five point lead on the pool A table?
Not me on both counts.
Sure, it's always to difficult to rate the strength of Heartland teams as their personnel can change quite dramatically from season to season and you are never sure who are utilising the "import" rules and who aren't.
Even so it was difficult to imagine a Wairarapa-Bush team with only half a dozen of last season's squad available making a successful defence of the Heartland title they won the previous year.
That may still not happen for reasons to be explained but no one can deny they are going down the right track, can they?
It might be tempting fate to say it but the odds are now hugely in favour of Wairarapa-Bush ending their pool A commitments without defeat.
Levin has never been one of their happiest hunting grounds but they will be meeting a Horowhenua-Kapiti team there this coming weekend whose confidence levels must be at rock bottom after three successive losses.
No doubt the message from Horowhenua-Kapiti management to their team will be that knocking off the top dogs would at least give them and their supporters something to savour out of the pool games but anything other than a comfortable Wairarapa-Bush win would still be a big surprise.
A match with Mid-Canterbury at home ends the pool A programme for Wairarapa-Bush and here too they will start firm favourites.
Mid-Canterbury did score 42 points in beating Horowhenua-Kapiti last weekend but their previous two games saw them beaten by Thames Valley and King Country, two sides Wairarapa-Bush have already accounted for.
The conclusion of the pool games will see the top three sides in pool A matched up against the top three sides in pool B in the Meads Cup playoffs, and this is where the acid will go on the current Wairarapa-Bush squad.
Their coach Graham Cheetham made the comment even before the season started that pool B appeared to have more strength about it than pool A, and the impression now is that he was spot on with that assessment.
Certainly North Otago which heads the pool B points table after clear-cut wins over Buller, Poverty Bay and South Canterbury is an ominous threat, and last year's beaten finalist Wanganui, surprise packets Buller and Poverty Bay, who beat Wairarapa-Bush in a pre-season match, all look pretty handy units as well.
The Meads Cup rules state that the two top qualifiers in each of the pool will play two of their three playoff matches at home which is, of course, music to Wairarapa-Bush ears. But, more importantly, they also state that the home team for the match between the leading teams in each pool will be that which aggregated the most competition points in pool games.
Unquestionably Wairarapa-Bush would rather play North Otago at Masterton than at Oamaru and if they need an incentive to pick up the maximum five points in those matches against Horowhenua-Kapiti and Mid-Canterbury that surely has to be it. Currently Wairarapa-Bush have accumulated 14 points to North Otago's 13 points so a maximum return in their next two games would do the trick nicely, thank you very much.
Finally, while on the subject of Wairarapa-Bush one must commend coach Cheetham for his refreshingly honest post-match remarks after the win over King Country last weekend. Rather than lay the blame at the feet or more correctly the hands of his players for the frustratingly large number of handling errors Cheetham shouldered most of the criticism himself, saying that management had probably "over hyped" them in the lead-up to the game and consequently nerves had played a big part in their error rate.
The quote from Cheetham that "coaches should look in the mirror first" before condemning their players comes right out of the Sir Brian Lochore handbook, and you couldn't have a better role model than that, could you?