Engine room boys will hold the key

The need to keep in touch with the leaders will be very much on the minds of Marist and Pioneer when they meet in a Wairarapa-Bush premier division rugby match at Memorial Park on Saturday.
Both the Masterton-based sides were suffered losses in the first of the championship round games last weekend and while losing again tomorrow won't do irreparable harm to their semi-final aspirations it will certainly dent them.
With soft ground conditions sure to make running rugby an improbable, if not impossible, the odds are that the team which controls the forward exchanges will come away with the spoils.
With old hands like Lee Paku, Kerry Hargood and Geordie Walden leading the way, aided and abetted by younger talent such as Corey Reid and Rhys Severn, Marist appear to have greater depth than Pioneer in the crucial ball-winning areas of lineout and scrum.
Certainly Pioneer struggled in the scrums against Greytown-Tuhirangi last weekend and with the irrepressible Nathan Rolls missing didn't have their usual grunt in broken play either.
Whether Rolls will be playing tomorrow had not been confirmed by the time these notes were penned but the Pioneer pack are clearly not the same force without him.
If tomorrow's game is to be forward-dominated the tactical direction of the inside backs will also play a crucial part in the end result and you can wager Pioneer will be looking to target the halfback position as one where sustained pressure could reap rewards.
In Tipi Rimene they have a player-coach who relishes one-on-one confrontations and this is a match where it would make sense to have him at halfback in the starting line-up rather than coming off the bench later in the game as he did against Greytown- Tuhirangi.
Pioneer will also want to utilise the aggressiveness of Russell Thompson at second-five and his clash there with the equally assertive Nathan Couch promises to be bruising affair.
Carterton currently hold a slender lead on the premier division competition table and they will meet second placed Gladstone at Carterton tomorrow.
One suspects that Carterton won't mind the prospect of a muddy surface for their forwards are undoubtedly their strength and they will fancy their chances of gaining an edge over Gladstone there.
Mind you, they will need to be wary of the threat posed them by Gladstone loosies Sam Henderson, Mike Spence and Steve Wilkinson if the "tighties" do not take absolute control.
In the backs Gladstone would normally be expected to call the tune from an attacking viewpoint, thanks to the abilities pf players like James Bruce ,Mike Shaw and Duncan Rutherford, but whether the elements will allow them the chance to fully express their skills is doubtful, to say the least.
The other premier division game sees Greytown-Tuhirangi playing Eketahuna at Greytown and there shouldn't be a lot in this one either.
The combined side's forwards would have taken a lot of confidence from the win over Pioneer last weekend although the loss of ever-consistent prop Dylan Higgison through injury will be a blow to them.
He is one of those valuable players who seldom gets the kudos he deserves simply because he buries himself in the thick of it and seldom gets involved in the flashy stuff.
Eketahuna, the defending champions, have had a tougher time of it this season and another defeat tomorrow could see them facing the unthinkable, missing out on a semi-final spot.
As we've said before though they are a side always capable of rising to the occasiona and victory to them here would certainly be no great surprise.
In premier division B matches Puketoi are at home to Martinborough and East Coast and Red Star clash at Whareama.