Strong support to retain Cheetham

The Wairarapa-Bush Rugby Union are staying mum on the four applicants who have been short-listed for the job of head coach for their Heartland championship side for the 2008 season.
Chief executive officer Phil Taylor confirmed yesterday that the original list of nine applicants had been cut to four and they would be interviewed next Monday by a panel consisting
of former Wairarapa-Bush
coach and All Blacks selector Lane Penn, WBRU board members Bryan Weatherstone and Fergus Rutherford and Taylor himself. That panel would then forward a recommendation to the WBRU board as to who they believed should be appointed and it would be up to the board as a whole to make the final decision. Taylor gave no clue as to who the four short listed applicants are but it would be a huge shock if one of them was not Graeme Cheetham who coached the Wairarapa-Bush Heartland team last season in association with Lofty Stevenson.
This writer alone has fielded several calls favouring Cheetham with many of them pointing to the fact that the union would be sending out the wrong messages to coaches currently operating within the local area if they appointed someone from further afield.
They exceeded most expectations by taking a severely-depleted squad from that of the previous season to the semi-finals of the premier section, the Meads Cup, and on that basis would have been favourites to retain their positions next year.
However, the move by Stevenson to accept a coaching role with a German club, starting in February, prompted the WBRU to re-advertise their head coach job, ostensibly because Cheetham and Stevenson had been appointed as joint coaches and that situation would no longer apply.
Cheetham's curriculum vitae makes impressive reading. Not only can he look back with satisfaction on his debut season with the Wairarapa-Bush Heartland team, but he was in charge when Eketahuna won three senior first division titles on the club scene a golden era for that small northern Wairarapa club.
And judging by the response from within the local rugby community to a Wairarapa Times-Age article asking who should coach the Heartland team next season, there is strong support from fans for Cheetham to be retained in 2008.
This writer alone has fielded several calls favouring Cheetham with many of them pointing to the fact the union would be sending out the wrong messages to coaches currently operating within the local area if they appointed someone from further afield especially with Cheetham having already confirmed that one of the region's most promising talents in the coaching sphere, Mark Rutene, has agreed to be his assistant.
While the names of those opposing Cheetham on Monday have not been made public, Times-Age inquiries suggest one of them formerly played at club level in Wairarapa-Bush and has actually coached against Wairarapa-Bush in the old NPC third division series.
There is a possibility too that a former Samoan international now coaching in Wellington could be among the "finalists" as well as another Wellington-based identity who has been involved in coaching representative age group sides in that province.