Lions ousted from finals’ race

By Gavin Staindl
IT was a Saturday to forget for the Springvale Lions as both the senior men and senior women were bundled out of last week’s semi-finals.
The Division Two men were knocked out of the best-of-three semi-final in two shut-out matches to the Melbourne Demons while the Division One women were controversially beaten by Malvern in their semi-final.
After winning all three encounters against Malvern during the year, the Lions were overpowered by the “visitors” who advanced to the preliminary final with an 11-6 win at Kooyong Park.
As fellow Division One side, the Springvale Pumas, were playing on Springvale’s main diamond, the Lions assumed they would play their semi-final on the reserve diamond but Baseball Victoria controversially knocked back the idea.
Despite finishing third and qualifying for a home-ground semi-final, the Lions were told they could not use the reserve diamond because they hadn’t played on that ground throughout the year.
As a result the Lions were ordered to play their home game on their opponents’ home turf.
It was a decision that, according to Mick Wearne, sealed the outcome.
“I would imagine if we had played at home it should have a made a difference,” Wearne said. “We have two perfectly good grounds, and we worked hard and earned the right to have a final at home and it was stripped away from us.
“It would have been a whole lot easier to have both games at the one venue … it definitely made a difference to the result,” Wearne said.
While the Lions played a home game in Malvern, the Division Two men’s side was in Surrey Park also trying to keep alive its finals ambitions.
After losing 5-0 on Wednesday night to Melbourne, Springvale looked to even the three-game series at 1-1, but a despondent first innings was enough to give Melbourne the series-clinching win.
The Demons scored seven runs in the first innings off Scott Bailie and three in the second innings off Miles Barnden as they romped to a 13-0 victory.
The Springvale side that was held scoreless only once before last week’s two shut-out matches finally succumbed to the persistent injury problems that plagued its final two months.
With a depleted pitching roster, Wearne turned to 47-year-old Rob Hogan to get his team over the line in game one.
Hogan pitched all eight innings on Wednesday, giving up five runs from seven hits.
The Springvale bats managed to get five hits of their own but failed to convert the runners on base into runs.
“We gave ourselves a lot of chances to score. We got a lot of runners on base but we just couldn’t come up with the hits at the right time They had seven hits and we had five, so you wouldn’t think it would be a 5-0 scoreline but they just got their hits at the right moment,” Wearne said.
But it was not all gloom for Springvale who on Sunday won the Division Two reserves grand final and had its other Division One women’s side, the Pumas, advance to the grand final to be held in a fortnight’s time.
After losing the semi-final to St Kilda by 14 runs, the seconds had a chance at redemption when they met for the Division Two reserves grand final at Tom O’Halloran Field.
The Lions, who had lost only three games for the season, topped off a successful year beating St Kilda 9-4 at home for the premiership.
The Pumas will meet the winner of Doncaster and Malvern in the Division One women’s grand final after it disposed of Doncaster in the 13-10 semi-final at Wearne Reserve.