Softball squad down to 11

Press, 10 December 1983, Page 80

Softball squad down to 11

Injury has forced another top Canterbury softballer, John Kottier, out of the South Island Jefferies Cup tournament at Papanui Domain this week-end. The defection of Kottier, who has a damaged hamstring, has reduced the Canterbury squad to a bare 11 players for the two-day tournament.

Canterbury was already without its dynamic shortstop, Jimmy Hall, who has 38 stitches in a leg which was gashed during a game

at the Cowans invitation tournament in the Hutt Valley last week-end. The bone in Hall’s leg is cracked and dented about the cut, and Hall is now out of the national championships, which begin in Hastings on December 28. The Canterbury men’s representative coach, Mr Arnold Hall, is also concerned about the leg injury of his star pitcher, Chubb Tangaroa, who will probably need physiotherapy again this jporning,-

In spite of the depleted squad, Canterbury will still be favoured to regain the Jefferies Cup, the symbol of South Island softball supremacy. One good omen is that the province also won the trophy in both 1979 and 1981 — Christchurch was the venue both times.

Canterbury will be very hard to beat with its powerful batting line-up, and the pitcher-catcher combination of Tangaroa and John Daly, who both made the Cowans tournament team. The back-

up battery is also a solid one of Mac Tangaroa (Chubb’s young brother) and Graeme Anderson. Its toughest opponent may be Southland, which also has several big batters, and has contested the last two Jefferies Cup finals with Canterbury. Last year Southland pipped Canterbury, 3-1, in the final. The late withdrawal of Otago ' has reduced the number of entrants to 10 teams.