Loan Wolves 10 - 23 Raiders Red

This week’s game was against Raiders Red. They’re a big club, with three teams, two of which are in our division. This time we were playing Little Billy Goat Gruff.
Rain and drizzle had restored Finsbury Park to its usual state of muddiness. We were short of spare players, but managed to field a full team and thankfully didn’t need to make any substitutions. I was catching, so spent much of the match squelching around in the afore-mentioned mud. Also called a few plays.
The Raiders didn’t make life easy for our pitchers, looking for walks rather than chances to swing. A strong first inning for them gave them a lead we couldn’t overhaul, but our performance with bat and in the field was highly creditable. Plenty of runs, two innings in which the opposition failed to trouble the scorers, and some fine individual performances. Alison’s fielding on third, and Kevin’s diving catch stood out for me, along with Mavy at bat ducking under an errant pitch. Some fine batting and base-running from everyone. I took part in the double play that never was – batter hit the ball short, pitcher Tigger got to the ball, threw it straight to Peter on First who made the out then threw it lightning fast straight to my glove, I pivoted, tagged the runner out coming into Home. However, as the out on First had been the third of the inning anyway, our stunning teamwork was irrelevant.
I took the team’s first walk of the season (which gives an idea of how sharp the pitching we’ve been facing has been), and got a real kick from base-running. At one point I dodged a tag-out between Second and Third, then dived headlong (into that mud again) to reach base safely.
Duncan DS was umpiring, and I’ve never heard a more talkative blue. Running commentary on every pitch, every play. We play the Strays next week.
After the game, we retired to the pub in the hope we could catch the West Br*m – Wolves match. Sadly, there was some unimportant European game on, with three Spanish blokes watching, and the bar staff wouldn’t change channels for us. Maybe it was as well to be spared the sight of my side losing, but it would have been nice to watch the game with all the Wolves cheering for their namesakes.