Group A showdown

Extra spice has been added to the Heartland championship rugby match between unbeaten pool A sides North Otago and Oldfield Wairarapa-Bush at Memorial Park, Masterton on Saturday Saturday by the competition format.
The top three teams in each of the two pools will play off for the major trophy, the Meads Cup, starting on September 23, and competition points earned in the preliminary rounds are carried over for those games.
What's more, they will decide the venue of the fixtures with the top two teams certain to play two of their three matches on home territory.
And they could also play a huge part in which four sides make it to the semi-finals beginning on October 14 as those teams at the top of the points list heading into the playoffs obviously have a head start in that respect.
For example if Wairarapa-Bush go into the playoffs with, say, 23pts and Mid Canterbury do likewise with 15pts then the latter obviously have a lot of ground to make up to reach the semis.
Wairarapa-Bush coach Peter Russell is well aware of what winning all five of their preliminary games could mean to his team.
"Obviously the more home games you can get for the playoffs the better and the facts are that we if win five from five we will have two," he said.
"And no doubt North Otago are thinking the same, they will be all primed up to keep their unbeaten record intact too."
North Otago have the slightest of edges on Wairarapa-Bush in pool A going into this weekend's encounter. They have accumulated 14 competition points , compared to Wairarapa-Bush's 13.and their game point differential, which could be vital if a countback situation has to be applied.to separate them, is better too, 89 to 35.
Mid-Canterbury is third in pool A with 5 points, followed by Buller and West Coast both 4 and East Coast 2..
Up front in pool B with 13 points is Wanganui and then come South Canterbury 9, Poverty Bay 8, Horowhenua-Kapiti 6, King Country 5 and Thames Valley 2.
On the basis that the two sides currently sitting at the head of each pool have the best chances of making the playoffs it's interesting to look at their draw for the remaining preliminary round matches.
North Otago have Wairarapa-Bush at Masterton and East Coast at Oamaru, Wairarapa-Bush have North Otago at Masterton and Mid-Canterbury at Ashburton, Wanganui have South Canterbury at Wanganui and Poverty Bay at Gisborne and South Canterbury have Wanganui at Wanganui and King Country at Timaru.
What this does is highlight even further just how crucial the result of the North Otago v Wairarapa-Bush match could be as the form book would certainly suggest that Wanganui will very probably collect between eight to 10 points from their next two games and finish the preliminary round around the 20-22points mark. The odds are that would be enough to make them one of the two top seeds for the semis but who would join them there?
Well, again if past results count for anything you would anticipate North Otago picking up the maximum five points against East Coast and Wairarapa-Bush achieving a similar result against Mid-Canterbury.
And that means in turn that whoever takes away the most competition points this coming weekend will very probably not only be earning themselves two home games in the playoffs but will be well on the way to qualifying for the semis as well.
Coach Russell accepts that North Otago will represent Wairarapa-Bush's biggest challenge of their Heartland championship campaign so far but he is convinced they have the ability to score what would be largely regarded as an upset win. Russell expects North Otago to play a far more structured brand of rugby than East Coast, the team Wairarapa-Bush beat by just 10-6 at Ruatoria on Saturday, and he sees that as benefitting his side.
"It's difficult to get into flow into your performance when the opposition is looking to slow things down and play a spoiling type of game but we shouldn't have that problem against North Otago," he said.
"We're anticipating both sides going out there with the idea of playing with control and discipline and it's up to us to manage that better than them."
Whether Wairarapa-Bush will utilise the same starting XV as they did against East Coast is doubtful as Russell expects the North Otago forwards to be much more mobile than the Coasters and so the return of Bert Buckle to the front row, Tomasi Kedarabuka to lock and Mike Spence to No.8 would be no surprise.
One suspects though that the rearguard will stay the same, especially since the defensive work of the back three was much improved at Ruatoria from what it was in the game against West Coast at Masterton the previous weekend.