The last day of the Irish Cup Plate & Bowl competition was held on Saturday 8th of September on the ALSAA playing fields at the Dublin airport. The Belfast Brawlers were scheduled to play two of the remaining teams. With a full Brawlers team present and none of the other teams making an effort the Bowl was won by the Brawlers. (Un)fortunately The Beechers (a team playing 2 divisions higher then the Brawlers) made it a great day for the Brawlers when they decided to teach us more about the game before sending us home victorious. The Brawlers always in for a game, learnt a lot from this team who ended winning from the Brawlers..

Pictures here.

As the weather turned for the worse the Brawlers battled the rain, wind, mud and Dogs.  In the first inning with all bases loaded, Terry hit a whopper into the outfield bringing Carrie, Connor and Lauren all home.  Go Coach!  With the Brawlers in the field, 2 of the Reservoir dogs managed to get home. There was a close out on first with great fielding from Nick but the ball just arrived a second too slow in Carrie’s glove. An excellent catch by Connor closed that inning.  The 2nd inning saw no scoring by the Brawlers but a good eye by Karen got her to first base. Out in the field, Stevie caught a great fly ball as catcher, Nick at 3rd base caught a lovely ball right off the bat and Connor closed the inning with an excellent tag on 3rd.  The 3rd inning saw Connor batting Carrie home, with some great hits from Terry and Lauren.  With the Brawlers back on the field Lauren grabbed a great ball from the air getting the first batter to the plate out.  Maarten and Carrie’s team work created a double closing the inning with a 4-6 score to the reservoir dogs. In the fourth inning, Nicky got to first on a great hit, but two quick outs and one more home by the dogs saw another loss for the Brawlers but a respectable score (4-7) against this division 2 team.

As it was an away game we were first up to bat whilst the Oddsox Reds took to the field. In the first inning you could feel the tension amongst the Brawlers as our batting was quickly put to the test, and with 3 quick outs we hit the field. Nerves got to the pitchers and the Oddsox benefited with some easy walks. But we got it together and some great back-ups, nice throws and good catches closed the first inning with 6-0 to the Reds.

Though the following innings saw no improvement in our batting with coop on 2nd being fed all our balls, we began to relax and the Reds felt it in our fielding. The second inning saw only 2 runs by the Reds. Our defensive training was coming in to play.  The following innings saw some great team work creating the outs on first. In the left field Pete and Karen fielded some great plays with their buddy system. Chris caught some nice balls heading towards the 3rd and got the outs.  The third inning closed with 1 run to each team. The brawlers getting their first run home. The fourth inning passed quickly with no score for either team but some great play and back ups by Charmaine in RF and Nick on 3rd and the two pitchers were beginning to own the plate.  After a successful fourth inning and achieving 2 homes and a dodgy trip (ahem!) into first base by the captain we flailed a little in the top of the fifth inning. The Reds got 4 home but when we were feeling a bit desperate the coach came to the rescue, Terry scooped up the ball and passed to Etain on 2nd who got the third out, closing the inning.

The game ended in a 05-14 score for the Oddsox Reds, and whilst it was technically a loss for the Brawlers we played a great defensive game and for our first ever match we did ourselves proud.  We ended the day on the field with some good hints from the umpire on our batting and look forward to our upcoming plate match with the Reservoir Dogs.

So the game was played and in good tradition (although this was the first match but a tradition has to start sometime) we ended the day with some nice cold ones.