Hall out of softball tournament

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 32

Hall out of softball tournament

By

TIM DUNBAR

Canterbury will have to go into the South Island men’s softball tournament for the Jefferies Cup at Timaru this week-end without its little short-stop, Jimmy Hall. Hall, who hit a home run on his <jebut for New Zealand last season, pulled a hamstring during the club match between his team, Noel Leeming Burnside, and United on Sunday. He is also in doubt for the Burnside team to contest New Zealand’s richest softball tournament, the Cowans 10,000 in Wellington from December 10 to 12. Burnside is one of an elite.of 14 teams invited to contest the tournament which offers a first prize of $4OOO. The 19-year-old Hall has

been warned that playing again too soon could mean an enforced break of six weeks and missing the Rothmans national championships in Dunedin over the Christ-mas-New Year break. He has been using plenty of ice to treat his injury. . For the Jefferies Cup tournament, Canterbury, the holder of the trophy, has struck by far the easier of the two sections. It starts with two easy games tomorrow against Mid-Canterbury (11.15 a.m.) and North Otago (2.45 p.m.) and should only have to win those to qualify for Sunday’s semi-finals. The other roundrobin game tomorrow is against a rather tougher opponent, Nelson (4.30 p.m.) with Dennis Dolejs on the pitching mound.

Otago, Marlborough, and Southland are all in section A, together with West Coast and South Canterbury. “We’ve struck it lucky for a change,” said the Canterbury team manager, Leon Fife.

The Canterbury representative squad will be down to 12 for this trip south as the United catcher, Tony Mountford, last week joined his clubmate, Paul McFarlane, on the list of unavailable players. Canterbury’s Palmerston North-based coach, Tom Hurinui, said this week that Alan Hall would probably have to do some back-up pitching over the week-end for the first string, Robert (Chub) Tangaroa, who has been reaping his usual big tallies of strike-outs this

Mr Hurinui will also be looking to batters such as the home run specialists, Roy Ah Kuoi and John Kottier together with Wayne Poore and Graeme Anderson to reproduce their club form.

Canterbury must still be favoured to win the Jefferies and carry out the first big objective of Mr Hurinui this season. His other, and main goal is making the top four cut-off at the Rothmans — last season Canterbury finished fifth in Mr Hurinui’s first year as coach. In the provincial team’s only previous outing this season, at Timaru a fortnight ago, it beat Otago. 3-0, and thrashed South Canterbury, 15-1.