The first club championships for the new season have been played, with the opening rounds of the men’s fours which were held on Saturday 26 September.
Match of the day was a crazy tussle between defending champions, Lou, Goz, Sid, Calum vs Roy, Graham, Irish, Antony. With the Roy skipped team out to a hefty 17-1 lead, it was looking like a very grim start to the competition for the defending champs who had lost to Laurie’s team in Round 1. Momentum in bowls can change though, especially in windy conditions, and after clawing back a few shots, got big numbers on consecutive ends to get it back to 17-17.
With momentum on the side of Lou’s team, and Roy’s team wondering what the heck had happened, Lou’s team were going to be hard to stop from this point. They continued on their run to get to 23-19 up on the last end. This was never going to be a simple story to finish off though! Lou crossed over to play his last two bowls, four shots down. Lou wasn’t going to muck around with that head and succeeded in putting the kitty in the ditch, though was still one down. Roy needing to add three more with two bowls, played a fantastic shot to play onto one of his non-counters to hit it up, with his bowl following through for them both to count, and also drew another to get four on the last end to get a 23-23 draw. Probably a fitting result for such a topsy-turvy encounter.
Top of the table after the first two rounds of play is the team of Laurie, Alf, Ian & Burgess. A team strong throughout on paper, and proving to be strong on the greens too so far, from their two wins have a whopping +37 differential. Ray Martin’s team also have two wins, they were last years finalists and keep the same team of him, Robbie, Gavin & Bas Dynan. Adam Newman playing his first club championship at Victoria for several years skipped his side to a strong win in their first match vs Jeremy Kydd, before going down to Ray Martin. Great to have him back on our greens for club championships again. Our new Scottish member Steve Nicoll played good bowls in an unsuccessful day (he certainly wasn’t the fall guy!), he’s looking forward to trying to get his first club champ match win on the board next week.
Club Pairs draw has been done. That draw, as well as the club fours results are online via the Competitions page:
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