Softball: Making a new pitch to the public

By CHRIS RATTUE

Softball makes its pitch to the wider sports community again when the new national league is played in March, and the sport hopes the competition will attract vital television coverage.

It's nearly a decade since the national league was scrapped, after the loss of brewery sponsorship.

Despite the success of the national men's team, softball has gone through some lean times in the past decade or so as minor sports struggle to get their share of the spotlight in an era of big money sports and saturation television and media coverage of them.

The national league was scrapped in 1993, after seven seasons which had involved some classic rivalries between clubs such as Auckland Marist and Wellington's Poneke Kilbirnie.

The new national league will be shorter than its predecessor, and, significantly, will be based around provincial sides instead of club teams, who will play on weekends in March.

Backed by gambler's money through the Community Trust, seven men's and five women's teams will square off, with the men's final in Wellington, the women's in Auckland.

North Harbour, Auckland, Central Vikings, Hutt Valley, Wellington, Southern Pride (South Island) and Canterbury will play in the mens, and Auckland, Waikato, Hutt Valley, Wellington and Canterbury in the women's.

It will cost each team about $10,000 to enter. The undisclosed sponsorship money will be used to promote the competition rather than fund the teams.

Softball New Zealand is also negotiating to get the competition television coverage, which is crucial in this day and age but often expensive for sports outside of rugby, league, soccer, netball and cricket.

A private production company is putting together a television package and SNZ chief executive Hadyn Smith is hopeful there is sufficient backing to at least cover the finals.

He said television coverage was crucial to all sports, and the health of the country, and he has had discussions with Government ministers on the topic. Softball currently got about 15 hours a year centred on the Black Sox games.

"If you are outside the big five sports, it costs a huge amount to get television," said Smith.

"It is more than crucial to any sport. The drop in numbers in our sport directly related to the drop in our television hours.

"In the 1980s, we had 22 hours a year and by the late 1990s it was zero, by which time our numbers of players had dropped by 30,000.

"Kids are stimulated by television coverage and it is important that our kids play sport.

"Not all of them can play rugby or cricket ... the proliferation of rugby and cricket in the main means kids don't want to play a lot of other sports. That is very sad.

"They are missing a lot of opportunities ... It is part of New Zealand culture."

SNZ chairman Dale Eagar added: "We want to try and pick up where we left off all those years ago when there was a lot of interest in softball.

"This is definitely not something we want to last for one year or limp along for a couple."

The competition will include a draft.

Each team can have a maximum of 14 players but some teams, such as North Harbour, left a number of places open to pick up players around the country who missed selection and have registered their desire to play.

Teams will also be limited to two pitchers, to avoid the chance of one team dominating in that area.

The lessons of the old national league series played a part in the setting up of its successor.

The old league certainly was effective in ensuring the country's top softballers competed against each other and the standards were raised by North American imports such as giant Canadian pitcher Darren Zack and others such as Jody Hennigar and Tim Wahl.

It also grabbed publicity for the sport in an age when that was easier to do for smaller sports.

But the series had its drawbacks, mainly in that it created "super teams" within provinces, which created struggles for those who fell in their wake.

That is a reason why SNZ has used provincial teams as the basis for the new competition, and it hopes that might also draw a wider audience.

A side effect of the new league is the downgrading of the interprovincial championships, which had lost their lustre anyway. They will become second tier tournaments for smaller associations and development teams from the bigger provinces.