Visitors wary of chances

South Canterbury coach Kent Adams has no illusions about the task facing his side in their NPC third division rugby match with Wairarapa-Bush at Memorial Park, Masterton on Saturday.
Adams sees Wairarapa-Bush as the team to beat in the championship race and, consequently, believes this particular game could be South Canterbury's toughest of the preliminary rounds.
"We know what we are in for ? we're not expecting any favours at all from you guys," he said. "You've obviously got a pretty impressive unit and it's going to be a big challenge for us."
Adams admits to being pleasantly surprised at South Canterbury's form over the first three rounds of third division play. They started with a 34-8 win over West Coast, lost 19-22 to King Country after being up 19-7 at halftime and beat arch rivals Mid-Canterbury for the first time in four years 21-12.
These results have them sitting third on the third division table, one point behind second placed Wairarapa-Bush and just two points in arrears of the current surprise packets, Buller, the only side to have won three from three.
With just six of last season's team back in action in 2005, and no imports, Adams had been anticipating some difficult times for his side in the earlier rounds so their present standing is a definite plus in his mind.
"We have a lot of players who are performing at this level for the first time and, quite honestly, we thought the settling in period would take longer than it has," he said. "The expectations probably weren't that high a month ago but the progress has been encouraging enough to think we could be thereabouts at the end of it all."
Adams has watched video coverage of Wairarapa-Bush in action and believes their style of play is very similar to that of his own side.
"Neither of us have what you could call big packs, so it suits us to play a free-flowing type of game and keep the ball moving," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of tries scored, that's the sort of game we are expecting it to be."
Injuries may force changes in the Wairarapa-Bush starting line-up from that which took the field in the 29-26 win over King Country at Te Kuiti last Saturday.
Prop Ashley Wells has sore ribs and No.8 Sylvanus Iro a sore shoulder, and while coach Peter Russell is optimistic of them being fit to play, he was placing them in the "doubtful" category yesterday.
"There's still a good part of the season to go and there's no point in risking injured players," he said.
Russell agrees the next two games-both of them at Memorial Park- could play a huge part in Wairarapa-Bush's bid to secure a home semi-final berth.
The maximum five points against South Canterbury this weekend and Thames Valley seven days later would go a long way towards ensuring that objective was achieved.
"We're targeting these games as the ones which can basically guarantee us a semi-final spot, so good results are very important for us," he said