South Park Bowls Club

As normal South Park are up there with Mech-Tool in mid table after 6 weeks.
See below table:-

Cummins A 8pts
South Park 8pts
Brinkburn Dene 6pts
Mech-Tool 6pts
Hundens Ladies 6pts
Cummins B 2pts
Barnard Castle 0pts

A good weekend of bowls saw South Park go top of the Indoor League. Despite being 1 player short they beat Cummins B and Mech-Tool did them a favour by beating the top team Hundens Ladies 16-15 in a struggle.

The table is as follows:-

South Park 10
Hundens Ladies 9
Cummins A 8
Mech-Tool 8
Cummins B 6
Barnard Castle 5
Brinkburn Dene 2

The 1st weeks indoor bowling saw South Park hammer Barnard Castle and Mech-Tool lose heavily to Cummins A. However week 2 saw a change in fortunes.

Mech-Tool pulled off a great coup beating Hundens Ladies and South Park threw away an easy victory against Cummins B, they were 6 shots up going into the last end and amaxingly dropped an 8.

Never mind, its a long season but both teams need to find a consistency if they are going to beat Cummins A to the league title this season.

In a lacklustre fixture, again Mechtool B found themselves 2 players short to face Alpha Plus at North Lodge.

2 people kindly volunteered to play at the last minute.

Carl Bozeate and Jonathan Handley made their debut and for 5 ends they were outstanding, a loud mouthed crowd of 2 people were applauding and jeering. Although these 2 people were drinking in the park like a couple of alcoholics on the scrounge they were obviously there to see the talent on show.

Sadly the game ended in a 3-1 defeat. The Morlands were obviously not on form on the night and the only winning rink came from Simon Brodie, Richard Copeland and Ken Wood.

Scott Morland quoted “the next six motnhs at work is gonna be rough, thank god thats the last game of the season!”

Saturday see the first game of the season indoor in the Triples where Bev Turnbull will be joining the Mechtool Rink. We hope for better things this year and our South Park rink are looking towards the title.

Jessica Hopkins was crowned the Darlington Indoor junior champion today, winning her group on shot difference, and then walking the final 11-6. She recieved the Peter Welburn Junior Trophy. As she was winning, our other junior members Barry Hopkins and Keith Burton, both County Under 21 bowlers, did not perform to their usual standard and finished 3rd and 4th place respectively in their tournament. 

Well done to Jess and im sure that this wont be the last time she grabs all the attention away from her brother.

Today four of our players were asked to participate in a competition at Darlington Indoor bowls centre. Richard Copeland, Keith Burton, Barry Hopkins Jnr and Barry Hopkins Snr were entered as a rink in a competition for ex-servicemen, due to one team not making an appearance. The format was that each team plays four matches of six ends, with the prize going on overall shots at the end. Our lads had a cracking first game, winning 19-0 after 6 ends.

As Baz Snr asked the organiser which rink the second game was on, he was told that there were no more games, and that they had been kicked out of the tournament because they were too good! After being good enough to stay and make up the numbers this was quite rude, but we know when we are not wanted! 

Apparently there was a complaint from one of the other players, obviously fearing that we may come away with all the trophies. Instead of trying to stop us by playing better bowls (as if they could) they decided it would be easier to kick us out.

I don’t think the club will ever live this down!

Today was the day of the grudge match between our two indoor teams. It was a game of high quality – from one of the teams at least. The South Park team of Sandra Hopkins and County U21 bowlers Keith Burton and Barry Hopkins Jnr raced to a 23-5 slaughtering of the Mechtool team, with a much less impressive line up of Scott Morland, Simon Brodie and Barry Hopkins Snr. Today was an important game as it was a 4-pointer, due to not being able to rearrange the game cancelled earlier in the season.

Barry Hopkins and Keith Burton were selected fore the Indoor County Under 21 team last weekend.

Unfortunately the team overall were defeated by 2 shots but both of our young stars again performed at a high level and did the club proud.

Our Saturday Lunchtime triples has a crunch tie this week as the South Park team face our own Mech-Tool team.

Previously the South Park team has proven too consistent for Mech-Tool and has demoralised them, however this time could be different.

Mech-Tool are coming into some form after a good solid win over Hundens Ladies and a close defeat to the league leaders Cummins A.

We are entering a team in the Darlington Indoor Locomotive Trophy.  We have entered this competition many times over the years without success. We once made the semi-finals to be slaughtered by Hundens!

This time it is only 2 rinks of 3 bowlers which should make it more interesting – as we will only have 2 rinks that can get beaten!