Castleknock Invitational 2010 Review

Squad:
Simon, Diarmuid, Kevin, Colm, Breandán, Justin
Orla, Angelica, Catherine, Sandra, Inge

Review:

We competed in this event on Saturday July 17th. In the end 11 teams contested divided into 2 groups. The first hurdle to overcome was finding the actual place, Castleknock College sports grounds. Many of the drivers got in various states of lostness, eventually everyone made it and we got to play our first game albeit a bit late starting.

First we played Belfast Jets, this was a very close game which we eventually won by a single run.

Next up was the Suspects, bit of a grudge match here against the team containing a couple of players who first played for Galway (Suzanne Doyle and Mark Smyth). Again this was a pretty close game and we had to contend with some horrendous downpours during it. We got the bats going well here and ran out comfortable winners in the end.

Next up was TwoPak (mix of Batpak & Packers), these were probably the favourites for the overall. Came into to this as big underdogs so we had nothing to lose. The rain had eased off by now. But not long into the game it came down even harder, we played through it as we couldn't get any wetter. We put up a pretty good fight here, we are actually up 1-0 after 1 inning, but they had some serious batting power and ran away with it in the end, but it was a pretty good defensive performance in the end.

At this stage everyone was soaked and a bit miserable, luckily it was lunch break so we had some time to eat and dry off and change. Fingers crossed that the rain had gone.

Luckily, the weather changed for the better and we had warm sunshine for rest of day. Next up was another premiership team, the hosts, the Bearcats. Again we went into this with no pressure and nothing to lose. We put up a great performance here giving them a big fright, losing by just one in the end.

We had a break for the next game as a team had pulled out at last minute. After the final games we had finished 3rd in our group and were drawn against Sinners/Belfast Aviators mix team. The long break probably didn't suit us here and we never got going in it, we fell a bit too far behind early on and never got back. So that was our day over.

All in all a good day despite the early weather conditions. Was also good to get some players experience of their first tournament (Inge, Sandra). Plus we got a bit of a pitching rotation going with Breandan and Kevin giving Simon some relief and playing a full game each.

Results

Group Stages:

Game 1 - Galway Tribes 6 v 5 Belfast Jets

Game 2 - Galway Tribes 14 v 11 Suspects

Game 3 - Galway Tribes 1 v 12 TwoPak

Game 4 - Galway Tribes 5 v 6 Bearcats

Plate Semi Final - Galway Tribes 3 v 11 sinners/Aviators