SOFTBALL
Giants Blue are warmly favoured to extend their unbeaten run in Intercity premier two when they host Poneke-Kilbirnie [PK] Red at South Park tomorrow.
The Blues have comfortably won their two games, scoring 12 runs and conceding only three, whereas PK have lost both games and have a runs differential of minus 13.
Giants stalwart Chris Feary believes the difference between the two sides could again be pitcher Justin ‘Chunky’ Karaitiana, who has been in dominant early-season form.
‘Chunky’ is feeling great, everything is working well and apparently, he pitched a hell of a game last week and had only two safe hits off him,” Feary said.
The Blues, though, will be without last week’s star performer Tristan Hillock, who was on fire with the bat and outstanding in the field in the 5-0 win over Totara Park Gold but finished the game with a broken hand, which will sideline him for several weeks.
Feary said there’s plenty of depth in the Blues squad, but he anticipates a tough game despite the teams’ contrasting starts to the season.
“PK are always strong, and I think that it’s the older PK team, and they’re a good team, and there are always good hard-fought battles with them.”
The first pitch will be thrown at 1pm tomorrow at South Park.
Giants Red face the long trek to Paraparaumu to play Kapiti Coast in the search of redemption after suffering their first loss of the Intercity Premier Three Championship, going down 13-12 in a tiebreaker to Dodgers White last Saturday.
“We’ve put that loss behind us, and we’re just concentrating on the game ahead,” team member Feary said.
“It’s been a long time since we lost a game, especially at home, and we’ve been reassessing what we did well and what we didn’t do well. We probably took our opposition a little too lightly and we won’t be making that mistake again.”
A full-strength Reds outfit should be too good for Kapiti, who have yet to win and have given up a massive 46 runs in their three games while only scoring 13.
Feary also predicts good things from the Giants women in their Hutt Valley premier three clash with Dodgers Divas at South Park, saying that the team continues to improve, which was evident in their 16-8 win over Demons last Saturday.
“I refereed some of that game last week, and boy, they played well,” he said.
“After two or three innings, that game could’ve gone either way, but the girls stepped up and put bat to ball and blew them off the park.
“They’ve had a good little battle going on with Divas over the past couple of years, and I would be confident that our girls have got on top of that rivalry.”
A close game is likely, with the teams sharing similar records of two wins and one loss.
The game starts at 3.30pm tomorrow.
