Waimea Combined ready for plate final

Waimea Combined Schools are chasing their best ever season finish as they prepare to face St Thomas of Canterbury College in tomorrow’s UC Championship plate final in Christchurch.

By making the second tier decider in this year’s Crusaders region secondary schools rugby competition, Waimea have already achieved their highest ever ranking after finishing eighth in the regular season. They’ll end the season in either fifth or sixth position, having finished seventh last year.

Waimea College previously won the third-tier bowl final in both 2008 and 2012. But Waimea Combined are a new entity and are facing a brand new challenge as they attempt to take out the second tier silverware.

They qualified for the final with a spectacular 57-14 win over St Andrew’s College last weekend, having also beaten St Thomas’ 40-29 at home in round three. If last week proved anything though, it’s that previous results are irrelevant after having also lost heavily to St Andrew’s earlier in the season.

St Thomas’ are traditionally a big and physical side, although Waimea will again attempt to counter that with their up-tempo approach.

And according to Waimea cocoach Glen Thompson, the players appear well primed to repeat last week’s heroics.

‘‘We had a fairly decent hit out on Monday and we’ll jut go nice an light [Thursday] and have a bit of a yarn, talk about attitude and head space,’’ Thompson said.

‘‘We talked about all the things we did really well and we made sure we gave it the time it deserved and celebrated that suc- cess. But then we said, ‘hey, we’ve still got to get better, there’s areas that we need to improve on’.

‘‘We’ve all watched the game together and said we’ve got to get better here, here and here, just so they don’t get carried away too much. But they’re all up for it.

‘‘[Captain] Josh [McPherson] had a good word to them at the end of training and just spoke about being remembered for your last game ... so they’ll be up for it for sure and they’re all pretty excited.’’

Some things never change and as always, defence will be critical to Saturday’s outcome.

‘‘I don’t think there’ll be any lack of motivation so the boys just have to get up and tackle. [St Thomas’] aren’t just a big forward pack, they’re big from one to 22 ... but in saying that, they tire a little bit easier as well and if you get into their head space like we did last time we played them, they tend to start arguing amongst themselves.

‘‘But it’s a different kettle of fish being in a final. These one-off game are about who wants it more and about who’s prepared to go out there and do it.

‘‘I think the guys learned last week that when we really want something, we can do it.’’