Wairarapa-Bush’s Sam Gammie scores the opening try against Poverty Bay. Photo/Jade Cvetkov
By Gary Caffell
Wairarapa-Bush head coach Josh Syms had mixed feelings about his team’s 24-14 win over Poverty Bay in the Jeremy David Memorial Trophy rugby match at Memorial Park, Masterton, on Saturday night.
While pleased his side had chalked up a victory in a game given first-class status, Syms was frustrated at the number of possible scoring chances which went by the board through a lack of accuracy and composure.
“We created nine or 10 really good scoring opportunities and managed to convert only three of them into tries and that’s something which has to be a concern,” Syms said. “You can’t keep doing that sort of thing and expect to win games against the better quality sides, can you?”
Wairarapa-Bush will have their final lead-up game before the 2016 Heartland championship swings into action when they play Wanganui in Wanganui this coming Saturday and Syms is under no illusions over how much improvement will be required accuracy-wise if they are to be competitive against the Meads Cup defending champions.
“You only have to go back to last year when we played them here and we kept making basic errors and they ran up 40 points against us. That’s what happens when you aren’t accurate enough against teams like that.”
Syms was “pretty happy” with the defensive efforts of his side against a Poverty Bay line-up which had no shortage of players willing to take the short route when they had ball in hand but there were a couple of blots on the copybook there too, tries being conceded right on halftime and right on fulltime.
“We were really sound in our defensive structures for the most part but two slip-ups meant we conceded two tries, again that’s not the sort of habit we want to be getting into either.”
