Pressure on Burnside today

Press, 10 December 1982, Page 32

Pressure on Burnside today

By TIM DUNBAR Noel Leeming Burnside will be put under severe pressure for the first time this season when it contests the Cowans 10,000 men’s softball tournament at Fraser Park. Lower Hutt, over the next three clays. In club softball this season Burnside has had 17 wins on end. 13 of them shutouts, and scored a massive 146 runs for just six against. It will be a different story altogether at Fraser Park with 14 elite invited teams chasing the $4OOO first prize .in the richest tournament in New Zealand softball history. The. tournament will be run on a double-elimination basis, so the Burnside coach.

Arnold Hall, is acutely aware of the need to win the first game against Mudgeway Wreckers (Hawke’s Bay) at 4.30 this afternoon. "It’ll be a hard grind if you drop any,” he said. Mr Hall will be assisted in the coaching duties at Fraser Park , by the former Canterbury Captain. Nigel Mattison, in Burnside’s bid for success: "We’re not going up there with any false illusions," he said. “We’re taking it one game at a time and the longer we stay in there the better we’ll get.” Last season Burnside sent shockwaves through North Island softball circles when it finished runner-up to Auckland club sides in both the big national tournaments.

the Qantel and the Pan Am. In each of those finals the mighty Hutt Valley and Wellington sides were left out in the cold. Mr Hall expects this tournament to be tougher than the Pan Am, with such teams as Railways and Cowans Cardinals (Hutt Valley), Miramar and Johnsonville (Wellington), and Ramblers and United (Auckland) all competing. Burnside will start with a certain advantage, having beaten the possibly jaded Mudgeway Wreckers. 4-0. in the Pan Am last March, but this time Mudgeway will have a different pitcher. Mark England, as the lefthanded Mark goldsmith is still in the United States.

although Burnside "went off the boil a bit,” beating United, 2-0, in a night game this week there was one very pleasing feature for Mr Hall—the no-hit, no-walk pitching performance of Robert (Chub) Tangaroa. “That was Chub's game. His control hasn’t been that good recently. I think that was his best performance all year." According to Mr Hall. Burnside has made only four or five errors in its 17 games this season and the baiters have been ' moving the ball." admittedly against pitchers, inferior to those about to be faced: and the two new gains. Roy Ah Kuoin and John Kottier. meant that the batting line-up was stronger than last vear. he said