Giants on target for Inter-City semi-finals

Giants are on target to make the semi-finals of the Inter-City men's softball series for the very first time.
Fifth placing is the best result achieved so far by Giants in a competition contested by the leading club sides in Wellington and the Hutt Valley but wins over Miramar and Porirua in the opening round of the top six playoff matches on Saturday has left Giants at the top of the points table.
Coach Tony Nixon said making the Inter-City series had always been a major objective for Giants this season and they probably now needed only one win in the playoffs to guarantee that.
And hopefully that would occur when they met Hutt City and Poneke-Kilbirnie in another double header at Petone's Fraser Park this Sunday.
"We're almost there and everything is geared to take that last step," Nixon said. "We've never managed to make the semis before so we don't want to slip up this time."
Saturday's 5-4 victory over Miramar took the money off the back of Giants who went into the game never having beaten Miramar's premier men's team on any previous occasion.
In an exciting encounter Giants had pitching and fielding "wobbles" in the opening two innings and found themselves trailing 0-4 but they came back strongly in the sixth and seventh innings to grab the win.
"We took a little while to settle down but once we got rid of the nerves everything pretty much fell into place," Nixon said.
The ability of Giants to withstand pressure was put to the test at Miramar's last turn at bat when they had loaded bases with just the one out but Giants pulled off a couple of fine defensive plays to save the day.
With Ritchie Clarke still sidelined with injury Mark Quinn took over the pitching duties against Miramar and did an excellent job while both Michael Grant and Terry Waitere had two safe hits with the bat.
Hard on the heels of the Miramar match came the encounter with Porirua and this proved to be a more comfortable win for Giants who raced out to a 4-0 lead in the second innings and won 6-0 in the end.
Pitching in this game was Justin Karaitiana and he generally kept the Porirua batters under wraps .Karaitiana was also in good batting form, as were Michael Grant, Goirdon Wilmshurst, Corie Karaitiana and Ryan Shannahan.
Also a feature of this win was the sharp work of Giants in the infield with Wilmshurst, Waitere, Shannahan and Blair Thompson all prominent there.