South Park Bowls Club

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!!!!

With 3 games left to play its going to be close between 5 teams looking for promotion to the 2nd Division.
Fishburn are currently top with Blackhall 2nd and us 3rd followed by Witton Gilbert.

We need to at least win at Peterlee this week to keep in contention, we would have been top however if we hadn’t been disengaged 5 points for Blackhall who god bless them don’t like the rain!

Saturdays Durham League game was sensationally cancelled due to weather. We await a dispute with the management committee to see if we gain 5 or 10 points for the game.

After a heavy downpour Blackhall refused to play on classing the green as dangerous, our club disagreed, however Blackhall BC left and we await the leagues decision.

Until this is resolved we lie 4th in the Division 9 points behind the leaders with a BYE next week.

Our Durham League hopes took another downturn yesterday with a 6-4 defeat at Belmont. However playing 2 players short means this is actually a good result and moves us upto 2nd place in the table.
We have a big league fixture at home to Blackhaal next week where we really need a big win to put the pressure on at the top.

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!!

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.

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.

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.