European Championship: Slovakia has their third win
It would seem that the game between Slovakia and Ireland on Friday wasn’t important as both teams were sure to play in the finals on Saturday. The game would, however, to determine who will win the group stage.
Coaches of both team didn’t play in full strength. Slovak started with Martin Gieci and Irish with Brendan Scott. First two innings went scoreless, but third one was a completely different story. First, Ireland took advantage of several Slovak errors and scored five runs.
However, Slovaks didn’t give up and took their chances in their half of the inning. Home batters sent balls in play and Ireland couldn’t defend against them. Slovak team came back from 0-5 deficit and took the 10-5 lead by the end of the inning. Interestingly enough, Scott only had two earned runs in the inning.
Score remained unchanged till the bottom of the seventh inning. There, Slovakia loaded the bases, followed by walk on Michal Noga which gave him a RBI. Mário Gottschall stepped in the batting box and with double, Slovakia was only one run away from finishing the game prematurely. They had to wait another inning, however, after Denis Pakši and Adam Zacko got on bases. Playing coach Martin Brunegraf then had a double which scored the 15th run.
Slovakia won 15-5 and won the group stage. They will play against Ireland at 14:00 local time to battle for the spot at the European Championship.
| 2.7. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IRL | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 9 | 2 | |
| SVK | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 15 | 11 | 0 |
