Law’s absence forces Tantrum to eye strategy

Wairarapa-Bush will be missing star No.8 Duncan Law for their Heartland championship Meads Cup rugby match with Poverty Bay at Gisborne on
Saturday.
Law left the field in the 28-13 win over Buller last weekend with a recurrence of the hamstring injury which had kept him out of the previous three pool A games and has not recovered sufficiently to be considered for the Gisborne trip
The value of Law's confrontational approach was illustrated time and again in the Buller match.He was a willing workhorse at running the ball back at the opposition from scrums and mauls and also impacted hugely with the aggressiveness of his close quarter defence.
Wairarapa-Bush is fortunate to have another experienced campaigner in Nathan Rolls to take Law's place in Gisborne but, as coach Kelvin Tantrum readily concedes , the two are very different players style-wise and "slight" strategic changes will need to be made to the game plan as a result.
"Nathan likes to run wider and is more a ball player than a ball carrier," Tantrum explained. "But that doesn't mean he's not as effective, not at all."
Rolls for Law is the only alteration in the Wairarapa-Bush starting line-up from that which took the field against Buller and while Tantrum was happy with what was achieved there he knows they will need to lift their performance to have any chance of beating Poverty Bay.
To that end the emphasis at training on Tuesday night was on getting more precision into their finishing work so that try scoring opportunities are regularly turned into points on the board.
Tantrum said it was a case of "repetition, repetition and repetition" with players constantly being asked to make decisions while under pressure.
"Everyone knows how to pass and catch but when it comes to accuracy we are tending to let ourselves down when we are being challenged by the defence," he said "Sometimes it's just a question of alignment or depth, sometimes the hands are not quite soft enough. It's nothing major, just a whole lot of small things which are combining to make life more difficult than it should be."
Tantrum said Wairarapa-Bush would be heading to Gisborne intent on following the usual philosophy of winning the forward battle and playing the game in opposition territory."Keeping it as simple as we can is the key," he said.
The Wairarapa-Bush team for Saturday is:Nick Olson; Junior Togia, Heemi Tupaea, Sam Mitchell, Tommy Harmon; Byron Karaitiana; Nick Risdon; Nathan Rolls; Chris
Senior, Tomasi Kedrabuka, Andrew McLean, Joss Tua-Davidson; Kurt Simmonds, Ben Pereira, Jared Brock.Reserves: Api Matenga,Sele Tugaga, Keiran Te Whare, Richard Puddy, Nick Beavon,Corey Reid, Tim Fleming.