Tantrum not flying white flag yet

Bonus points are all that have kept Wairarapa-Bush in the hunt to make the top six playoffs in the 2008 Heartland rugby championship.
Four pool games have produced just the one win (against South Canterbury) but the four points they received for that success have been supplemented by no fewer than six bonus points, giving them a total of 10.
Ahead of them leading into the final series of pool A matches this coming Saturday are West Coast (15pts), North Otago (13pts) and Buller (11pts) while behind them are Horowhenua-Kapiti (8pts) and South Canterbury (5pts).
What this means is to qualify to play in the premier section of the Heartland championship, the Meads Cup, by finishing in the first three of their pool Wairarapa-Bush must come away from their remaining game with defending champions North Otago in Oamaru with at least two points to show for their efforts.
That, however, would only be enough should Buller lose to West Coast and gain no points in the process. Otherwise anything less than a win over North Otago won't be good enough to stop Wairarapa-Bush from sliding into the Heartland's bottom tier, the Lochore Cup, for the very first time. And they just might require the bonus point for scoring four or more tries as well to make that avoidance an absolute certainty.
Coach Kelvin Tantrum knows his team will start underdogs in Oamaru against a North Otago side which has won three of their four matches, and which has a former Wairarapa-Bush player in halfback Hamish McKenzie as one of their star acts.
But he isn't flying the white flag yet, saying that if his team can produce the same form they displayed in the last 20 minutes of their match with Horowhenua-Kapiti at Memorial Park on Saturday for the full 80 minutes anything is possible.
Two converted tries in that period saw Wairarapa-Bush close the margin between them and Horowhenua-Kapiti at the final whistle from 36-17 to 36-31 and they did so by playing some of their best rugby of the season.
"I'm not saying we were happy with that performance because we weren't but the last 20 minutes showed what we can do when we hit our straps," he said. "It's getting that sort of effort over the whole 80 which is the challenge & and we've been saying that practically every game , haven't we?"
Tantrum believes their lack of patience was the main undoing of Wairarapa-Bush over the first hour of play.
"We kept forcing passes and turning over ball, we were rushing things too much," he said. "It was like we were wanting to score every time we got our hands on the ball but rugby at this level isn't like that, you might need to go through several phases before scoring opportunities are created."
The prospects are the starting line-up in Oamaru this coming weekend could vary to some degree from that for the Horowhenua-Kapiti match.
Tantrum said management would be discussing their options at some length over the next couple of days but was loathe to make any predictions over what changes in personnel if any might be made.
"There are a few options available to us and we'll obviously be aiming to come up with a side which can do the best job for us," he said.
No doubt Tantrum and his assistant coach Mike Robinson would have noted with interest that when Wairarapa-Bush made their comeback against Horowhenua-Kapiti.
Nathan Couch was at halfback instead of his usual position of second-five and Nathan Rolls was at lock rather than blindside flank. And that reserve players like Nick Olson, Mike Shaw, Brett Rudman and Mike Wilson were on the paddock as well.
Perhaps too Tantrum and Robinson might be tempted to draft in some of the leading players in a Wairarapa-Bush B team which hammered their Horowhenua-Kapiti counterparts, players like first-five Dean Grant, second-five John Guillard and flanker Sully Alsop, all of whom have played at Heartland level in the past.