Real rags to riches story

Rags to riches & that's pretty much the story for East Coast and Martinborough as they prepare to do battle in the semi-finals of the Wairarapa-Bush senior first division rugby championship on Saturday.
The improvement made by East Coast in the space of 12 months has been dramatic.
Of the 10 first division sides operating in the local region they were ranked above only Masterton Red Star at the end of the 2007 season.
And that made them the lowest-ranked side in the premier league at the start of this season due to Masterton Red Star withdrawing because of a shortage of players.
Martinborough, like East Coast, failed to make the top section under last year's competition format which divided the then 10 first division sides into a top six and bottom four, the latter playing off for the senior second division title which Martinborough duly won.
This season has seen East Coast and Martinborough in an entirely different light. In the Moose Kapene Cup competition both teams won four of their eight games with East Coast being placed fourth overall and Martinborough sixth.
Points from that competition were then dropped for the first-ever championship round involving quarter-finals for which East Coast qualified as the sixth seed with four wins from six matches (including the bye which was worth the maximum four points) and Martinborough as seventh seeds with three wins from six matches. They too had the benefit of the bye.
Both sides then kept their championship hopes alive with impressive if upset wins in the quarters, East Coast by 15-5 over third seeds Pioneer and Martinborough by 8-6 over second seeds Carterton.
Interestingly enough, East Coast and Martinborough did not meet in the lead-up to the quarter-finals but they did clash in the Kapene Cup and there it was East Coast who prevailed by a convincing 27-3.
However, Martinborough were severely enough depleted by injuries that day to make the result of little value when assessing their chances for their Whareama clash this coming weekend, the winner of which will, of course, continue their fairytale rise to prominence by qualifying for the grand final at Memorial Park seven days later.
The other semi-final this Saturday is actually a repeat of last year's first division decider, Gladstone v Marist, only this time the match will be played at Gladstone rather than at Memorial Park.
For defending champions Gladstone their path to the semis has been relatively smooth. They did have a couple of hiccups late in the Kapene Cup competition but still managed to grab the major spoils there and their 18-7 win over Eketahuna in the quarters made it six wins from as many matches in the championship proper.
Marist have had a more mixed bag of results. They were third in the Kapene Cup with five wins from eight matches and after winning three from five in their preliminary games were seeded fifth for the quarters, where they beat fourth seeds Greytown 27-18.
Gladstone and Marist have met on two occasions already this season with Gladstone prevailing 30-13 in the first and 28-20 in the second.
The losing quarter-finalists in the senior firsts competition still have the chance to end the season with some silverware as they will now be involved in semi-final games for what now becomes the senior second division competition. Saturday's draw sees Greytown at home to Eketahuna and Carterton likewise to Pioneer.
The semi-final draw for the senior thirds competition is different from what was published yesterday. It has Pioneer playing Featherston at Park Sportsground and Tuhirangi playing Masterton Red Star at Pongoroa while in the President's grade semis Carterton will be at home to East Coast and Marist will play Gladstone at Memorial Park.