Ames? injury seen as major setback for Giants

The probable loss of catcher Curtis Ames through injury is a blow to Giants leading into their men's softball double header with national club champion Hutt City United at South Park, Masterton tomorrow.
Ames had a spell on crutches after injurying his ankle some 10 days ago, and while Giants coach Tony Nixon hasn't completely ruled out any chance of him playing this weekend, he rates him a "very doubtful" starter.
Nixon admits a Giants team without Ames would be weakened as catcher is a specialist position, and the Canadian is not only a proven performer there but is also one of the side's most consistent batters.
But he is confident that in the versatile Corie Karaitiana he has a player who will do a good job at catcher if Ames is sidelined.
"He (Karaitiana) hasn't had a lot of experience there but he is a natural sportsman who would excel anywhere," he said. "He won't let us down, that's not a worry at all."
Giants and Hutt City United have had some memorable clashes over the past year or so, with Giants beating them to in the final of the Hutt Valley premier division competition at the end of last season, and HCU edging them out 2-1 in their most recent match.
Nixon expects nothing different on this occasion, predicting that both games ? one of which count towards the Hutt Valley competition and the other the Inter-City series ? would go right down to the wire.
And because of that he says having Giants in the right mental state to produce an top performance will be no problem.
"Everybody knows that in games like this you get only one or two chances to put runs on the board, and whoever makes the most of those chances wins," he said. "Getting players up for matches like this is never a problem, they actually look forward to the challenge."
Nixon said he will be stressing to his players, however, the importance of starting strongly, as a couple of their losses this season had come because they had conceded two or three runs in the first innings. One of those was their last meeting with Cardinals to whom they lost 3-2 after Cardinals had scored all of their runs at their first turn at bat.
"Making up lost ground is never easy at this level, most of the sides are defensively very tight and don't give you any easy runs," he said.
Nixon is hopeful too of strong support from the local sporting fraternity in the matches which will get under way at 2pm and 4pm. "The more vocal the crowd the better for us, in games like this that can actually mean the difference between a win and a loss," he said.