A DRAWN match against Sydney-based side Muppets ultimately cost Hastings a place in the final at the annual Hastings Easter Baseball carnival at the weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Hastings finished the three-day carnival with a two win, two loss, one draw record before Substance proved too strong for Muppets in a 9-5 victory in Sunday afternoon’s final.
Association vice-president and Hastings captain David Boyton acknowledged his team would have struggled to back up in the final anyway.
“If we had have made the final, we would have only had a 15 minute break between games and that would have been really tough,” he said.
“It was more a trial-based carnival for us.
“We wanted to develop some of our younger players and give them a bit more time out there and we did that.”
Boyton said the feedback from all seven clubs who participated throughout the weekend was positive.
“Every team was rapt in how the carnival went,” he said.
“There’s a larger carnival held in Tamworth and most of the people we spoke to said that they had more enjoyment at ours and that’s really encouraging for us.”
There's a larger carnival held in Tamworth and most of the people we spoke to said that they had more enjoyment at ours and that’s really encouraging for us.
- David Boyton
Hastings started their campaign with 7-4 defeat to association counterparts Spartans on Friday before they returned to the winner’s circle in their next match.
Boyton said numbers were down this year compared to previous years, largely due to Easter not falling in the school holiday period.
“We’ll hopefully get more teams next year, but it all depends on the timing of everything,” he said.
“We can probably manage a carnival with 12 teams.”
Attention now turns to the season ahead and the state championships in Sydney later in the year.
“There is a serious representative carnival that will be held at Blacktown in August,” Boyton said.
“We’ll send our best team down to that.”
Read more:
