“A bit gutting for the guys.”
That’s the reaction of Giants stalwart Chris Feary after Giants Blue, the club’s Intercity Premier Two side, won this afternoon’s preliminary final against Hutt Valley Marist without taking the diamond.
The two were scheduled to meet at South Park, with the winners progressing to next weekend’s semifinal, but Marist pulled the pin on the game on Thursday afternoon, much to the disgust of the Giants club.
‘I’m very annoyed,” Feary said, “these are quarterfinals, and Marist now have no chance of making the final, and it’s now two weeks in a row that our guys don’t play a game after having last weekend off.”
Feary added that the Giants club are now waiting to get confirmation from Intercity Softball that the Blues will go straight to the semifinals.
Defaults are nothing new for Giants, with some teams regularly pulling out of games when scheduled to travel over the hill.
Feary believes the club are not getting good value for their affiliation fees of nearly $2000 a team they pay to Hutt Valley Softball, and with the cost of minivans for away trips, he said the competitions are expensive enough to play in without the disappointment of teams defaulting.
There will be some action on the diamonds, though, but not in Masterton, and Feary is confident of a successful day for his Giants Red team, who play the battling Johnsonville Swingers at Alex Moore Park, Johnsonville. He admits he knows little about Johnsonville other than they are languishing at the bottom of the table with just one win.
“The guys are going well, and we’ve got semifinals coming up the following weekend, and one vs four is typically the easier path to the final, but there have been a few seasons where we’ve been the bridesmaid and never the bride, so it’s a big one for us,” he said.
Feary is also buoyant about Giants extending their lead in the Hutt Valley Women’s Premier Three against the winless WASC at Fraser Park, saying they will itching to get back on the diamond after being defaulted to one hour before the start of last Saturday’s game against Petone Rugby.
‘They’ve always had the wood on WASC, so I would say they’re going in there extremely confident and just building on the foundation they’ve already laid.”
The under-13s will also be confident of scoring their third win of the season when they travel to Fraser Park to play Marist, who have yet to win.
