Despite dissappointment in not being promoted this year, we got the 2nd best in the news that Fishburn, our friends who have shown great hospitality this year winning the league. The good thing about this is Blackhall failed to win the league. GET IN YOU BEAUTIES!!!!
This week we picked up an excellent 3 1/2 points away at Shildon Town then a further 2 at home to the league leaders. When the league table is updated we should be hopefully off the bottom.
There are 3 teams in danger and we are finally starting to show a little form. Shildon Town and Cockton Hill are in the same danger as us and we really need to ensure we keep picking points and we may be able to escape the likely drop into Division 2.
Scott Morland quoted “I feel like I have just won at Worthing!”, as he defeated Sandra Hopkins 21-19 in the Mechtool Championship, after a comeback from 19-7 down.
In other news, Barry Hopkins Jnr has progressed to the Henderson Shield semi finals, after beating Sandra 21-5, the Junior Championship final, after beating Peter Binney 21-2, and the Mechtool Championship 2nd round, beating Keith Burton 21-10. After being disappointed in the South Park championship, he is aiming to defend the Works League Title he won last year.
There has been some progress made in the Town Competitions in recent weeks, as Barry Hopkins Jnr and Snr beat Steve Northam and Mark Ralphs of the RA 16-3 to reach the Cameron pairs Semi Finals, where an encounter with Andrew Kirtland seems very likely. The two Barry Hopkins’ and Glyn Jones are also in the Semi Finals of the Town Triples, to play Brinkburn Denes Ray Bowers rink, and the same 3 plus Bill Morland are up against Alan Stephensons rink from the RA in the Darlington Building Society Fours Semi Finals. Hopefully we can make it through in all of them, as the finals will be played on our home green at South Park, due to one of the Vets players being President this season, and this will surely give our lads a great advantage.
Bill Morland won the South Park Championship yet again after he beat Barry Hopkins Snr 21-15. After being lucky to knock out Barry Jnr in the previous round, he had a more comfortable win in the final. Bill now aims to win the district Champion of Champions for the second year running.
In other news, Barry Hopkins Jnr lost another singles match by a narrow margin as he went down 21-18 in the Co-op cup, the district two bowl singles, to Graham Peacock at Hundens. Not a bad effort, and after Barry had made his traditional comeback, from 13-4 down he just got pipped at the very end.
Despite being a dominant force over many years in the club championship Bill Morland was given a fright in his semi-final with Baz Junior.
It eventually finished 21-19
We were ready and raring to go away to Whessoe at North Park last Friday.
Terrential rain had us all running for shelter until 7.30pm. The rain then stopped the green was holding and draining well.
Sadly Whessoe refused to bowl, all games by standard practice should only be cancelled by mutual agreement or the green declared unbowlable. The green was fine and the rain was non-existent from 7.35pm until 8.25pm. No Whessoe bowler checked the green and all players point blank refused to play, should we get 4 points??!!!!! - I think so.
Lets see what happens in a league with no set rules and a secretary who is a member of Whessoe BC!!
Watch this space! - with Cummins not showing up last week as their superstars weren’t available and Whessoe refusing to play, should this be the end of the Works League, it seems nobody wants to bowl in it!
After a diffiuclt and tiring start to the season we are now nearly at the half way point nad have our frst league victory under our belts which should lift the confidence of the team.
We beat Cockton Hill 4.5 to 0.5 last week and this week face a difficult game at Hundens but am sure we can scrape 3 points with a little extra effort.
Come on lads we can do it!!!
Barry Hopkins jnr agonisingly missed out on a place in the county Under-25 singles final, and more importantly a trip to Worthing, in a 21-20 defeat to Philip Dixon of Sunderland B.C. last night. The match was played at Barnes Park, in Sunderland, which means that Philip had probably played on this green before. It was close game all the way, and Barry had a couple of chances to wrap the match up towards the end. At 18-15 he had to trail the jack a yard to win, but could only just clip the jack slightly as his bowl went through. It inevitably reached 20-all,and with the last bowl of the match Barry came so close to taking out Philips shot bowl, but caught it too full on and the bowl was pushed onto the jack and just managed to stay on the edge of the green while the jack went into the ditch. Also in the semi-finals there was a narrow defeat to another player from the darlington area as Andrew Kirtland lost 21-20 in the 2-bowl singles.
Sunday night was also disappointing, as Barry and Sandra were knocked out of the mixed pairs 17-11 in another tight game against Eddie Henry. They kept it close, but were never in the lead, and just didn’t bowl well enough to win on the night.