Top four confirm Tui Cup semi spots

South Wairarapa clubs Greytown and Martinborough earned themselves home semifinals when the last of the preliminary round matches in the Wairarapa-Bush Tui Cup premier division rugby competition were played on Saturday.

Greytown will host Gladstone next weekend and Martinborough will welcome East Coast.

Tensions ran high going into Saturday's play, with six of the eight premier division sides still a chance for semifinal spots but as it happened, the results were something of an anti-climax with the top four sides retaining their positions.

A strong second-half effort saw Greytown defeat Pioneer 22-3, scoring four tries to none.

For Pioneer, it was a disappointing end to their Tui Cup campaign but they had the consolation of having won the Kapene Memorial Cup first round competition in commanding fashion, winning all 10 of their matches.

Martinborough were expected to have a battle royal with Gladstone but with a vocal home crowd urging them on, Martinborough ran in four tries and triumphed 30-11.

The news was not all bad for Gladstone though as the defending Tui Cup champions lived to fight another day, having accumulated enough competition points beforehand to still make the semis.

East Coast and Bush Sports turned on the fireworks at Whareama, scoring 12 tries between them in a match won by East Coast 54-26.

Wairarapa-Bush utility back Nick Olson scored a hat-trick of tries for East Coast and added four conversions and a penalty for good measure, giving him a personal tally of 26 points.

Eketahuna needed the maximum five points to have any chance of making the semis when they played Carterton at Carterton and while they scored two tries to Carterton's one, it was Carterton who took the honours 16-12, thanks mainly to the three penalties and one conversion landed by Danny Brown.

Preliminary round standings: Greytown 22, Martinborough 21, East Coast 20, Gladstone 15, Pioneer 13, Eketahuna 11, Carterton 10, Bush Sports 5.