[CentOS] script help - '3rd last field'

Mon Jun 8 09:29:05 UTC 2009
Tom Brown <tom at ng23.net>

Hi

I need some logic to work out a value for me - this value is _always_ 
the 3rd last field in a string seperated by '.' but the string could be 
5 or 6 fields long, e.g

foo.bar.VALUE.baz.lala

foor.bar.gigi.VALUE.baz.lala

I need to find VALUE - if this were python or something i could do it 
but this has to be in shell -

Any clues?

thanks