Bay of Plenty Rugby has set a tight deadline on appointing a replacement for departing coach Kevin Schuler, who announced today he was going fulltime with Japanese club Yamaha.

The union has called for a two-week application process and hopes to appoint a replacement before the end of February.

BOPRU chairman Bruce Cameron and chief executive Jeremy Curragh are determined not to lose momentum after the Steamers improved showing last year _ something Schuler believes augurs well for the upcoming season.

"It's a short time-frame but the coaches that are out there will be organised with their CVs and people that are keen will get in pretty quick," Schuler said.

Former All Black Schuler has had a long involvement with Yamaha, first as a player then as a coach.

For the past two years he's acted as Yamaha's adviser, spending two months a year with the club while also controlling the Steamers, but the offer to go back fulltime was too good to turn down.

"Commercial considerations definitely came into it and I've got to do the best for my family, but there were many emotional reasons tying me here. This is my home now so I prefer to see it as a sabbatical, rather than a sayonara."

Curragh said the big-money offer was something that all rugby entities in New Zealand had to contend with.

"The players will train as normal and we'll make sure there's limited disruption," he said.

"We've just all got to wake up and deal with it _ this is the nature of the rugby environment, it's going to happen to players and coaches and everyone else in rugby."

Potential replacements for Schuler include former Counties-Manukau coach Errol Brain, who coached Tauranga Sports to the Baywide title last year, and another Baywide championship winner Sean Horan, who was the Steamers manager last year.

Schuler admits his six-year tenure involved in the team _ firstly as a technical adviser, then as assistant coach _ has been a roller coaster ride.

In his first year in charge in 2007, Bay of Plenty struggled to 13th place in the 2007 Air NZ Cup but the cash-strapped province improved considerably to place fourth last year.

"It was tough in that first year but we managed to get a group of players together last year who were playing for the Bay for all the right reasons.

"There were a lot of new faces on board in my first year and we started quite late but we saw the benefits last year of a management team sticking together. The contracting in the offseason has gone really well and there's a core group of players there which augurs pretty well."

A number of the prospective Steamers squad are currently committed to the Super 14 competition while those who aren't have been doing their pre-season training for some weeks.

Curragh was sad to see Schuler go and could see how hard the decision was for him to make.

"We were definitely keen for him for 2009 and Kevin was as well until the Yamaha offer came along," Curragh said.

"The hard part for Kevin is that he's got the bulk of the squad back for '09 and this could have been an exciting year for him."