Speaking ahead of his final game in charge of the Border outfit, Kereama said he was immensely proud of what he had accomplished over the course of his two-season tenure with the Lady Bandits.

The New Zealand Tall Fern assistant coach took the Border club to its maiden play-off appearance last year and ensured not only league-wide respect for the Lady Bandits but also pocketed the coach of the year.

Kereama admitted he was satisfied he had achieved almost everything he wanted.

“I feel good, I feel like I’ve fulfilled my obligations to the club and the community,” Kereama said.

“I feel as though I made the team pretty competitive and coming into the program that was the main thing.

“The girls went from being a very average team at best to a competitive team week-in, week-out and I feel, even with our restraints, we were able to do that pretty well.”

Even though the Lady Bandits will miss the play-offs this year, Kereama said that was more a reflection on quite a few SEABL teams loading up with WNBL-calibre players than any drop-off in intensity from his players.

“I think probably more last season than this season, but just the consistency, to be able to perform at the same level every week,” Kereama said.

“Even still to a certain point this year, we’re not quite as strong as we were last season, we’ve been fairly consistent this year but we probably had more of an X-factor about our team last year.

“And that meant that we were able to steal some of those close encounters against the top teams but it’s hard to say, I hope everything we did here is viewed as an accomplishment.

“I just think the women’s program does a much better job than the men’s program across the board and probably have since the women’s program has been around but that’s just my opinion.