Portland Pirates

So it was time for the Pirate's to face off. Portland versus Paddington. Last year DDB had arrived smartly dressed and promptly commenced their warm up routine. 

This year, having already met a couple of their Pirates at the Rookie trails (who had stumbled across our blog from last year.....).

They were determined to demonstrate their drinking side and did indeed show up with a galleon filled to the brim with plundered rum. Could this new tactic turn their crew into true pirates on the field?

Well Paddington's crew started well scoring 2 in the first innings and holding us to 3. A lead for us that we went on to stretch. After five innings we were 19-10 up and as our pirates eased off the batting and their crew stepped up in the last two innings we were held to the final score of 19-12.

Some high and lowlights from a good game.

"So Jon was partying and introducing Rocco to Ibiza and the Panda was....... well Waldie keeps secrets better than the Illuminati


Alongside 2 star players being absent there was also the matter of a 5 year old curse to overcome – to date whenever Waldie or JB are absence a loss follows closely behind...... and let it be known that Waldie keeps opening umbrellas in-doors at Fuel the problem was exacerbated

Well let’s get it out of the way – the curse was broken and is now forever broken. Thank god Alex was donning his lucky tights

Although there were certain parts of the game where the curse reared its ugly head, we were just too strong as a unit for it to prevail. There were definitely signs of team effort, one example being Bethan sprinting to pitch 10 with unconditional determination to ensure she didn’t miss the start of the game, as well as heeding cries from Chris reminding her to "Ignore the Physio!"

Ant needed to step up to the plate and fill in for the missing JB and Panda as pitcher – some pre match practice paid dividends, even though Will was poaching a lot of his Dads pitching practice.

We went out to field first, with Coxy’s short stop career opening with a dive into the ground with absolutely no chance of getting within stretching distance of the ball – we kept their runs to 2 for the first two innings even though we were looking  a bit scrappy after our break since taking down Capgemini.

The sun was also blindingly low in the sky, but our opposition demonstrated their solution infield by laying down flat at 3rd and short stop to avoid the sun, although effective against the sun it was less effective against our batting....

We notched up 11 runs in the first two innings, overshadowing their 4.

In the third though following the excitement of music supporting a 5k charity race that nearly trampled us to death - we had began to flag, with 3 runs in the 3rd and nothing in the next three innings!

Luckily we held strong in the field and only allowed TBWA to score 3 runs over the same period. This was thanks to Bridge holding strong to a slide on second that she seemed to just brush off, Ang keeping the in-field in check and the outfield digging deep to a lot of low balls that skimmed across the craterous pitch

When we came up to the 7th, everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the vistory was ours and we could relax as we batted out the game and began to smash the ball all over the park running in another 9. Final score 23 – 7

Some other highlights included:

• Grey O’s frustration at his dipping batting average – until a homerun struck and a celebratory cartwheel onto the home plate almost took out Ant
• The deepening divot next to the batting plate, that we are sure Betgenius dug in order to slow down our hitting rate
• Will coaching Ant into the glove of the outfield

Well done pirates!

Also special thanks to; Lisa for dragging herself to the park making sure we were not short of girls even though she should have been tucked up at home fighting off the plague, Ant for so valiantly stepping up as a stand in pitcher and everyone for maintaining our undefeated streak. I know from murmurings across the bars of Regents Park the name of the Pirates is being spoken in hushed tones.

Next week is another rest week before a straight run of games through to the play offs. Although there is no game next week, the All Star Rookie trials and a chance to play in Las Vegas start on Monday. I highly recommend the trials for both a chance of making the cut and another chance for some training and beers in the park.

Captain Rubble