South Park Bowls Club

The team had a good night of success away at Belmont last night in the Durham League Handicap Knock-Out.
We held a 27-26 lead before the start of play and then had 2 out of 4 rinks win to take us through to the 2nd round where we will face 1st Division outfit EverReady Craghead. This will be a very difficult fixture but with a 26 shot start it will be a good opportunity to again progress.

Another 5-0 drubbing this time at the hands of Shildon Town has surely doomed South Park to the District Leagues Division 2 even at this early stage of the season. Again one man down but one highlight was the debut from Paul Kelly.

Competitions this week have seen Keith Burton beat Barry Hopkins Jnr in the 4 wood EBA Singles and both of them losing in the pairs to the Northams. Andy Bell, Scott and Bill Morland were unlucky in the triples losing to Andy Kirtland by 3 shots at Stockton despite being the better team on the night. Scott and Bill were then beaten in the pairs as they couldn’t make a good start pay against Liam Macey and Craig Northam.
Despite these results we wish all our district members luck in the county stages of these competitions.

In the Durham League competitions Scott, Bill and Sandra Hopkins won their first game in the Hospital Cup against Peter Wilkinson rink.

We now look forward to our home matches tonight against Whessoe and tomorrow afternoon against Peterlee. Then Monday night see our debut in the Millenium Cup away at Belmont where a win would see us with a 25 shot advantage againt EverREady Craghead in Round 2. Lets get stuck in!!

We made progress in the EBA Fours and Triples last night seeing both teams into the District Finals.

Bill, Scott Morland and Andy Bell scraped by on an extra end despite losing most of the game beating Andrew Parnell, Bob Oliver and Eric Fordy from Stockton BC.

Barry Hopkins Snr & Jnr, Ken Wood and KEith Burton beat Paul Frasers Hundens rink on the last end in the Fours.

Tonight we face a tricky tie away to Spennymoor B, a bottom of the table clash, we are hoping for a shock win with perfect performances from our newcomers Carlos Bozeate and Jonathan Handley.

Its been a mixed start to the season, after a 4-0 win in the Works League over the Rolling Mills we couldn’t have got off to a better start, then 2 wins and a loss in the Durham and District League has seen us start fairly well. Then disaster has struck on a Thursday night with issues fielding a full team resulting in 3 defetas 5-0, 5-0 and 4-1 with another tough game at Spennymoor this week.

The competitions are progessing well and will keep you updated with successes over the next few weeks.

Well, our first Darlington & District League game ended in disaster. We were comprehensively beaten 5-0 at Shildon BR. To be fair I don’t think the club has won their in 15 years, despite their weakend team we could still ony field 10 men which showed on the result.

We expect better things this saturday in our first Durham home league game as we have an almost full strength team to face Belmont.

Despite a TOUGH week with many of our regulars missing for our first Durham League fixture at Witton Gilbert we were victorious with a 6-4 win. Our winning teams were B. Hopkins/C. Gittins/S. Jenkins & W. Morland/K. Burton, losing rinks were E. Theakston/R. Copeland/V. Tunstall & S. Morland/J. Smith/M. Best.

We would like to thank the players who played at such short notice for us as we really appreciate their help.

We now look forward to our next game at home to Belmont on Saturday.

At last we finally have someone willing to take the Works League forward as Chris Oyston was voted the new Works League Secretary.

The league now has intentions and possibly a future. From our clubs point of view this is still a disaster. We have been forced to withdraw a team from this league as our proposal to change the format to double fours has been rejected.

This league badly needs promoting and it looks as though the league will only do this kicking and screaming, however last night some foundations were layed but it seemed that nobody cares that a team has dropped out. This could happen to Cummins next year, how many casualties will it take before this problem is taken seriously.

With a new season ahead we can’t wait to start showing the RA the way to go!!

We have meetings for the District and Durham League this week and hopefully finally the Works League.

As the news unfolds we will give you all an update, this weekend the site will be back and regular updated with exciting news.

Our first game in the Durham and District League is a tricky away tie at Witton Gilbert. Not many of our players will have been there before and we expect this to be as tricky as any game gets in the third division.

After a hard winter we have lost the following members and need to rebuild, the likleyhood of 2 teams in the Works League is nowing looking bleak.

Richard Copeland
Alaina Chesney
Martin Snelling

All key players, but never mind we look forward to an exciting new season where the 2 Hopkins have been nominated for County along with Keith Burton and we have a new league to play for in Durham.