ITM Cup: Steamers to rise for Ranfurly Shield

FILE

The Bay of Plenty Steamers will challenge for the Ranfurly Shield this afternoon against Hawke's Bay. Sports reporter Peter White caught up with the senior players and Steamers head coach Kevin Schuler ahead of the challenge.

No8 Carl Axtens, whose father Steve Axtens played 55 games for the union, has fond memories of holding the Ranfurly Shield with best mate Sam Cane at Reporoa College in 2004.

"I can remember Wayne Ormond back then and all the hype that was around the Bay of Plenty winning it," Axtens said. "It was pretty cool. As a young fellah, I was always pretty much in awe of those players and what they had done. I guess you get a bit of an appreciation of it when you actually play ITM Cup. It is a pretty big thing."

This week Axtens has noticed an obvious lift in excitement at training ahead of today's big game.

"Everyone is pretty fired up about it and training has been pretty intense. But we need to do what we do every week, and just nail all the little things at training. We don't want to do anything different. We just want to play our normal game and our normal patterns, and keep everything really sharp.

"As the season has gone on, I think our defence has got a lot better. We started pretty poorly and it was stinging us, but that first half performance that we put on against Auckland, if we can continue that on for 80 minutes we will be somewhere in the running Saturday."

Captain Culum Retallick is by far the most experienced player in this year's Steamers squad, with 77 games in the jersey.

He has seen most things but he has never challenged for the Ranfurly Shield.

"Everyone is just looking forward to the opportunity," he said. "Whatever has happened previously in the season doesn't really count for anything. It is all about what happens on Saturday. Where we are with the team at the moment is a good position to be in.

"It will be massive for the Bay if we can lift it. When they won in 2004, it did so much for the union and the team kicked on from that as well. From that point of view I would say [chief executive] Mike Rogers would love to have it here, taking it around and getting people behind the Bay. It means something to everyone and brings everyone together."

Retallick said the opening stanza against Auckland showed the Steamers can do it against one of the top two teams in the competition.

"We had them under all sorts [of pressure] in the first half. We have made good progress in the last three to four games, even though we have only won one. At the start we were losing games if we missed tackles and lost the ball, whereas the last few games have not been through missed tackles, which is a positive. We have got that out of our game now."

Coach Kevin Schuler took great satisfaction from his team's dominant display in leading Auckland 12-0 at halftime in Rotorua last Sunday.

It was the blueprint of what they want to do in Napier today.

"It was really good how we were able to play that many phases and really stretch their D [defence], when normally you would expect the defence to have the upper hand," Schuler said. "We created so many opportunities, it wasn't funny really. The thing for us is the discipline and the composure to finish those opportunities is going to be key.

"Hawke's Bay has been a strong set-piece team all year and we are confident in what our defence has done in the last couple of weeks. We won't be giving them easy picking there.

"We know we are getting some good parts of our game right but there are other little areas that are letting us down. We are excited about getting a complete 80 and if that happens this weekend we will be stoked."