Raiders Red 19 - 3 Loan Wolves

Welcome, ballgame fans, to the first match report of the 2009 season. It's going to be a long one this year, with a whole twelve teams in Division Five scrapping for promotion or to avoid the drop.
First up for us was this away game to Raiders Red. We found ourselves facing a stronger side than we'd been expecting - Raiders are a big club (130 players now, I think one of them was saying). They picked up a lot of top-flight players over the off season with the effect of strengthening all their sides as good players get demoted to lower division teams within the club.
The weather had turned cold on the weekend, and yesterday it turned wet too. Drizzle most of the day had eased off, but as the match started a steady downpour began. This may have actually helped us - as a wise man once said, nobody's very fast when they're knee-deep in mud. Certainly, we can be proud of our performance in the first two innings, holding onto a 1-0 lead. The rain stopped though, and that's when it all went a bit askew. Sadly, our fielding was good but our batting let us down and they managed to get away from us later in the match. My hoped-for Good Season With The Bat (tm) has singularly failed to begin yet. I saw quite a bit of action at Catcher, but failed to make any outs from it. Among the high points I noticed were Kate's consistently effective pitching, good fielding at Third from Donnacha and excellent co-ordination between Kevin at Short Stop and Vic at Second. It was a friendly match and both sides had fun.
We accompanied the Raiders to the pub - the George is now the Avalon - and had a beer or two to drown our sorrows. They had Doom Bar, which was a bonus.