It's bounce back time for the Masterton-based Giants men's softball team when they take on Dodgers in a Hutt Valley premier competition match at Haitaitai Park this coming weekend. They are determined to return to winning form after suffering two hefty defeats last Saturday.. A 19-7 loss to Cardinals was followed bya 13-0 loss to Hutt City. Coach Russell Thompson was pleased with the batting form shown by his side in the early stages of the match with Cardinals. They led 7-5 at the end of the fourth innings and looked to have the hot favourites in strife. But as good sides are apt to do Cardinals responded to the pressure by becoming more assertive in their batting approach and they pulled away for a handsome victory. "They just hit the hell out of the ball??..that was about all there was to it," Thompson said. "There weren't a lot of errors on our part it was just power batting by them" The Giants v Hutt City encounter lasted just five innings with Hutt City scoring four times at their first turn at bat and then shutting Giants out of the game. "We started badly and never got warm," Thompson said. "I guess we were still a bit shell shocked after the Cardinals game too??.it's tough to get yourself back up after a result like that." Thompson is confident though that it will be a different Giants team which takes to the ball park this weekend. He was pleased with the enthusiasm shown at training at training last night and said management and players were looking forward to locking horns with Dodgers, who were similar in strength to Giants. Thompson believes the end result will come down to which of the two teams performs best with the bat. "There'll possibly be only one or two runs in it???.it'll probably go down to the wire," he said. At least five of the Giants players seem likely to be representing Hutt Valley at national tournaments over the Christmas-New Year period. Ryan Shannahan, Blair Thompson and Troy Laurent have already been selected in the under-19 side-of which Russell Thompson is assistant coach- and Justin Karaitiana and Richard Clarke are front runners for their NPC line-up, which plays at one tier below national league.
