It was a weekend of upsets in the top division of the National Softball League when the second Diamond Series tournament was played at Farnham Park on 11-12 June, with challengers shooting up the table and the traditional ruling class struggling to keep their heads above water.
Chromies, Pioneers and Blue Steel had occupied the top three places in the NSL 1 table after the first league games of the season were played at Diamond 1 in May. But when the smoke had cleared after Diamond 2, Pioneers had slipped to third, Chromies to fifth and Blue Steel to sixth, a little too close to the cut-off zone where teams will fail to make the Premier Nationals for comfort.
Sweeping the board
H2O and Legends, both with 7-0 records at Diamond 2, were the teams that took over first and second place respectively, while the other big winners on the weekend were the Knights, who posted a 5-2 record and vaulted into fourth place.
Legends, who were in ninth place after Diamond 1, started the day with an 11-10 win over Chromies and then beat Blue Steel 6-3, the Knights 6-4, the Pioneers 11-1, both the Terriers and Greensox by a score of 15-5 and the Bees by 9-8. This might have been the biggest jump in the standings on one weekend in NSL history.
Meanwhile, the national champion Chromies could only manage a 3-3-1 record on the weekend, while Pioneers were 4-3 and Blue Steel just 2-4-1.
Legends, Pioneers and Knights all have a 9-5 record, separated only by run difference, and lie 2.5 games behind H2O with only one weekend of NSL play to come, at the Windsor Tournament on 16-17 July. Chromies, in fifth place on 8-4-2, are also 2.5 games behind, while Blue Steel, in sixth position with a 7-6-1 record, are four games behind.
There’s not much time left for the old older to take back control.
Nationals places
While the change of the guard at the top of NSL 1 is a dramatic story, the key battle is still over who will make the top eight places and advance to this year’s Premier Nationals in August, and who will miss out.
Slammers and LNZ currently occupy the seventh and eighth positions, and it was LNZ who made the biggest charge among the lower-placed teams, moving up from last place after Diamond 1 on the strength of a 4-3 record at Diamond 2 which included a pair of one-run wins.
So the teams that would miss out on the Premier Nationals if the cut-off came today would be Thunder, Greensox, the Bristol Bees and the Yorkshire Terriers. But all four teams are close enough to have every chance of moving up into the top eight if they can have a good weekend at the Windsor Tournament and someone above them falters.
Standings
Here are the NSL 1 standings with two weekends of league play down and one to go:
| TEAMS | WON | LOST | DRAWN | GB | RF | RA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H2O | 11 | 2 | 1 | --- | 157 | 108 |
| Legends | 9 | 5 | 0 | 2.5 | 117 | 81 |
| Pioneers | 9 | 5 | 0 | 2.5 | 126 | 77 |
| Knights | 9 | 5 | 0 | 2.5 | 113 | 88 |
| Chromies | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2.5 | 127 | 114 |
| Blue Steel | 7 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 130 | 106 |
| Slammers | 6 | 8 | 0 | 5.5 | 80 | 115 |
| LNZ | 5 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 78 | 127 |
| Thunder | 4 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 103 | 119 |
| Greensox | 4 | 9 | 1 | 7 | 104 | 124 |
| Bees | 4 | 10 | 0 | 7.5 | 98 | 118 |
| Terriers | 3 | 10 | 1 | 8 | 95 | 151 |
A story on results and standings in NSL 2 after Diamond 2 will be posted on this website shortly.