Eagles fall prey to Saints
Jack Rennie races for home plate after a sacrifice fly ball to the outfield gave him a chance to put runs on the board. Photo: Jack Malcolm.
The Eagles weren't able to follow on from a strong start in their encounter with a visiting Saints side from Marlborough in a 10-3 loss.
But it was also a sense of the scorecard not telling the whole story as the home side at Saxton Pavilion started the game on the front foot.
Seven batters would face pitches in their first at-bat, putting three runs on the board to start the game in the top of the first.
But the Saints were early to answer back, with two runs of their own in the bottom of the first before turning a double play in the second to head back into the dugout without suffering any more damage.
They then took the lead in the bottom of the second, with errors starting to creep into the Eagles game, which allowed runners to advance to scoring positions and post an additional three runs on the board.
With the home side now down 6-3, both squads tightened up through the middle stages of the game as neither allowed any runs through two full innings before the floodgates opened.
With the game given a 90-minute time cap, the Saints piled on five runs, including an inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the fifth, to take a strong lead with just minutes on the clock.
The innings would be the game's final plays, as the Eagles would have had to claw back seven runs in the space of two minutes if it went to a sixth.
Eagles coach Brayden Reynold says it's hard to keep pushing and fighting when errors creep in.
"One or two drops in an inning, and people start to drop their heads.
"It's a massive momentum shift when you drop ones you shouldn't.
"Riley (Power) was pretty momentous [pitching] on the mound. It's very hot and he only had a couple of earned runs, the rest were errors."
With a couple of weeks break, with Nelson's anniversary weekend and then a bye, Brayden says they'll be hard at training, ironing out their errors to come back stronger than ever.
"I think we came out of the box hard. We just couldn't stop a massive game of momentum."