Giants far from being disgraced

Giants might have placed only 11th equal at the national men's softball inter-club championships which drew to a close at Hastings over the weekend, but their overall performance was better than that would suggest.
The Masterton-based team, which had won the Hutt Valley premier division title for the first time ever the previous weekend, was drawn in a tough pool, but were well on the way to achieving their objective of a top eight placing by beating Hutt Valley Marist (5-4) and Auckland Marist (7-0) on opening day.
Then followed a narrow 5-6 loss to Johnsonville after they had climbed back from being 1-5 down, a 3-6 defeat by North Harbour champions Northcote and a 5-7 loss to Richmond of Christchchurch.
Those results left Giants third in their pool and in a play-off for positions nine to 16.
There they started with a 7-0 thumping of Tamaea of Hawke's Bay, before losing to Waitakere Bears 4-8.
A 10-3 win over Howick left them equal with two other teams for the final of that section and it came down to a countback between them and Waitakere Bears.
Both teams were even on runs differential, but because Waitakere Bears had beaten Giants they were given the nod.
Assistant coach Russell Thompson said Giants were disappointed at not making the top eight after being within sight of it after the first day, but their four win, four loss record against such high calibre opposition was still pleasing.
With 46 runs they were one of the highest scoring teams at the tourney, and a number of players hit home runs.
Blair Thompson managed three, and others to put the ball over the fence were Curtis Ames, Justin Karaitina, Corie Karaitiana and Trevor Aldred.
"The batting was outstanding?as good as we could ever have expected," Thompson said.
With wet weather persisting through most games pitchers and fielders were sometimes prone to errors, but Thompson was "pretty happy" with the effort of Giants in both those areas as well.
Catcher Curtis Ames made a good fist of that difficult role in all eight matches and young short stop Ryan Shannahan starred in most games as well.
Giants also took pleasure from the fact that Hutt City United made it through to the tournament grand final, as they were the team they beat 2-0 to win the Hutt Valley championship.