Softball teams upset about format

Press, 23 February 1989, Page 44

Softball teams upset about format

Two of the club teams from Canterbury — Burnside and Suburbs — are upset about the format adopted for the grand finals of the inaugural South Island men’s softball league at Cuthberts Green this week-end. Zone eliminations were held in Nelson and Invercargill last month, each producing four teams for the South Island league finals. But one of the southern zone qualifiers, representing Eastern Southland, has since withdrawn and Woolston-Car-dinals, another softball club from Canterbury, was brought in to make up the numbers. Cardinals

did not play in either of the zone eliminations. Both Burnside and Suburbs left the northern zone eliminations in Nelson with the understanding that the South Island league champion would be decided in an eightteam round-robin.

Instead there will be two sections of four teams with Ellis Park (Otago), Burnside, Panthers (Southland), and Saints (Marlborough) in one and Nelson Metro, Old Boys (South Canterbury), Suburbs and Cardinals in the other. The top two teams from each section will qualify for the semi-

finals on Sunday morning. Burnside’s playercoach, Graeme Anderson, is unhappy both with the format and the introduction of a new team, Woolston-Cardinals, “out of the cold,” while all the others had to go through the elimination rounds. "It is reducing the status of this tournament to a sham,” he said. "Our grudge is not with Woolston but with the organisers.”

The games will be played tomorrow evening but after the first full day, Saturday, half the team will be playing off in the losers’ bracket. This is a situation Anderson de-

plores, seeing a roundrobin as a much fairer way to decide the league.

Both Anderson and the Suburns player-coach, Bryan Mountford, thought it was unfair an extra team had been added without having all the expense of a trip to Nelson to qualify.

The tournament organiser, Denis Dolejs, who doubles as Nelson Metro’s player-coach, said that a seven-team round-robin tournament was not practical.

A majority of the seven qualifying teams said they preferred to play in two sections of four teams

rather than a rouncl-robin. Mr Dolejs said that a round-robin could have tied teams up late on Sunday if a play-off had been required, something neither Metro nor Panthers was agreeable to.

When the Eastern Southland team pulled out, none of the other teams from the northern and southern zone eliminations had been willing to travel to Christchurch for the finals.

Mr Dolejs made the .decision to invite Wools-ton-Cardinals after consultation with Canterbury Softball Association officials, Janine Lynn and Dale Eagar.