One could say that there were two key developments from the ninth round of the RSA D1 [Open] League, the top and bottom teams increased their distance from the rest of the field and all the other teams bunched up. Leinster consolidated their position at the top of the table with their sixth win out of nine matches [2 NR] and Terenure failed to close the gap at the bottom. Wins for North County and Merrion brought them back into the pack where there are now four teams with three wins each [other two being Clontarf and Railway]. The comprehensive win by The Hills brings them level with YMCA on four wins.
Like last year it is building up to a tense end of season.
The results from the weekend were.
Leinster [21] beat YMCA [4] by 21 runs
Leinster 248-7 from 50 overs (Carroll 100*, Moreton 70, Strydom 36/4)
YMCA 227 (Strydom 68, Law 23/4, S Moreton 23/3)
The Hills [25] beat Clontarf [0] by 9 wickets
Clontarf 208-9 (Coghlan 61, Murphy 53/4)
The Hills 210-1 (Baumgart 139*, Andrews 50*)
Merrion beat Railway by 11 runs
Merrion 222-7 (Poder 59*, Lang 57, P Collins 40/3)
Railway Union 211 (Fisher 54, Anderson 24/3, Poder 31/3, Kane 37/3)
Terenure lost to North County by 137 runs
North County 226-9 (Armstrong 58, Van Zyl 46/3)
Terenure 89 (Bertram 20/5, Richardson 17/4)