Promotion secured with a game to spare !

Traditionally, we don't tend to do things the easy was in Brannockstown. While our promotion rivals played back to back games knowing they needed to not only win big and secure maximum bonus points, they also needed Greystones to do them a big favour and beat us. They got off to a perfect start, demolishing Merrion by 124 runs. The following day, they got off to a flyer scoring 242-9 against Malahide, only for Malahide to put up a real rearguard action and score 191-9 in reply. This meant that we only needed 2 losing Bonus points against Greystones to secure promotion to Division 12. A good performance in the field restricted Greystones to 183-8, thanks to 3 wickets from Vishnu and 2 from Neville. It wasn't so straight forward in the reply. Although Ghanim scored 34 and Gunter with an excellent 62, we couldn't get over the line. In the end, the came up short by 14 runs. The good news however, was this was good enough for 5 losing bonus points and promotion secured.

Onto this weekend, and our last game of the season. This game was due to be played earlier in the summer but was postponed due to pitch availability in Observatory Lane. To avoid a repeat scenario, we agreed to host the fixture even though, we'd already hosted Leinster once this season. Leinster broke all sorts of records that day. The opening partnership of 180 was the biggest recorded in Brannockstown according to CL records eclipsing the previous record of 177 which was set in 2107 by Richard and Rehan. The final score of 285 was the 2nd highest score ever recorded in Brannockstown. In reply, Halverstown gave it everything with Clive scoring 82 from 61 balls, including 9 x 4's and 3 x 6's. It wasn't enough however, with the final tally being 241-6. 

All the pressure is off this weekend, as Leinster arrive as league winners and we have promotion secured. However, don't for a second think that either team will be taking their foot off the pedal. Leinster are looking for finish their season unbeaten, and Halverstown would like to finish with a flourish. 

Weather is forecast to be overcast with some showers on Sunday, but we would expect a full day's play.