The second round of the club fours was played last weekend, and to say the results were very interesting would be a big understatement.
Kevie’s All-Stars plunged back to earth with a thump when Don Sullivan’s quartet jumped out to a quick 10/0 lead after just four ends and never giving the opposition a look-in from that point onwards, winning comfortably in the end by 30/10.
Special mention to Mal Dawes who kept “father” in check with an excellent display of lead bowls, that really set up the head for his team and put constant pressure back on the opposition to counter these shot bowls.
In the second game Bruce Maher, Robert Bateman, Peter Cross and John Edwards finished a tad better than their fellow combatants Graham King, Bob Ashdown, Peter Payne and Aaron Hutchison with some eight unanswered shots from ends 16 to 20 after the scores were locked at 11/11 after 15 ends of this contest.
This time around it was the good play of Robert Bateman in the second spot for the winners that was a telling factor. While for the vanquished, Graham King certainly had Bruce Maher’s measure for most of the match, but on ends 16 to 20 when Bruce finally moved the mat up the green, yes only took him 16 ends to change something, Graham wasn’t quite so dominant and John’s four got on a roll.
The third match in these quarter finals fixture saw Robert French steer his “young guns” Mark Hilder, Alex Sambrook and Budd Cape around the paddock nicely to set up a comfortable 25/13 win over Bob Weir, Geoff Anderson, John Heterick and Phil Harding.
“Frenchy’s” professional manner was pretty evident, and his experience also proved the difference. It was good to see him take this group under his wing.
After all, sometime in the future, hopefully not too far down the track, Mark, Alex and Budd will be able to play on a regular basis. However for the moment bowls runs second to a few other “irons” they have in their respective fires.
In the final quarter final match, we saw James Coen, Bill Shaw, Danny Carnevale and David McNair go up against Peter Kelly, Brian Bulley, Norm Newman and Steve Buttworth.
What an absorbing battle this was and as expected it went right down to the wire.
David led for most of the game but a dropped multi score of six on the 16th end saw Steve jump out to a 13/10 lead.
Only some clever play and a little bit of luck from the “silent assassin” saw this lead reeled in, and at 15/15 after 20 ends it became a one-end shoot out. Then we had a twist in the tail, with the umpire required to determine the shot bowl and therefore the winner of the match.
Fortunately Des was able to use the orbital measure and so an exact measurement was adjudicated, with David McNair and team advancing to the next round. Congratulations to both teams- either would have been worthy winners.
Sunday morning rolled around and by mutual agreement Robert French and team lined up against John Edwards’ quartet in a semi-final clash.
This game was played due to uncertainty about who would be available next week, so rather than put in subs or even dare I say, one team forfeiting, the boys went ahead and played Sunday morning.
The scoreboard after 10 ends was 10/10 and most pundits had glued themselves in for a great finish, but as can often happen in this game, one team got a little bit of good fortune and the other had a couple of unlucky rubs and the next thing we knew the scoreboard had blown out to 26/13 in favour of John’s team after just 15 ends.
From that point on it was “tuff” going for “Frenchy”, and while he was able to reduce the deficit by a few, time was against him with the final score being 29/19 to Johno and co.
So next week we will see just the one semi-final with David McNair’s quartet taking on Don Sullivan’s four for the right to play John Edwards in the final the following week.
Social bowls was again under the influence of Mother Nature who put a dampener on Thursday afternoon’s scheduled foray.
We managed to get a game on Friday night when some 22 turned up for our Central West Surveying and Civil weekly point score event, and the same sort of handy field went round in our normal Sunday morning “chook run”.
Firstly to Friday night’s event.The winners were Barbara Newbold and Clifton Harris who scored 15 points.
The next best score was 12 points and with a superior margin in second spot was the team of David Price, Graham King and Rosalie Woods.
Other winning rinks were Kerry Gainsford, Mavis Leak and Des Lincoln, and also the trio of Tracey Silk, Brian Bulley and Jan Buswell.
Great to see the ladies supporting this event and for the first time they outnumbered the “fellas” 12 to 10.
Sunday social bowls results:
The winners on the day were the triples team of Gordon McIntyre, Bob Ashdown and Rosalie Woods who scored a tidy 17 points, while the runners-up cheque went to Brian Bulley and Mavis Leak on 14 points.
The jackpot was not won. Once again the ladies had the numbers with there being 12 of them in action, with the “fellas” only able to muster some 10 players.
Just a reminder nominations for the A grade and B grade pairs are now being called for and intending players and/or teams are advised to get their names down sooner rather than later as both events close in the next couple of weeks.
And finally on a sad note we lost a great mate last week with the passing of Barry Robert Morton.
“Bails” was a great vocal supporter of Narromine Bowling Club and his war cry of “up the Tah’s” will be sorely missed during the upcoming pennant season.
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