South Park Bowls Club

Its all coming to a head this week with an away fixture at Cockton Hill tonight and tomorrow night a game away to Leeholme needed 8 points to be sure of survival.

If we do not acheive our 8 point target our fate lies in the game between Shildon Town and Spennymoor A. If Spennymoor beat Shildon 5-0 we would need as little as 3 points to stay up in 2 games so its all exciting in a hope to keep our Division 1 status.

This has however somewhat disrupted our Works League finale as we have been forced to call off our fixtures to play Leeholme instead. We hope these can be rearranged but to be honest the Works League has been somewhat pointless this season for all concerned. I’m sure this will be another interesting AGM where we may make some proposals to rename the league and change the format.

South Park are officially relegated after a point deduction enforced by the League. This report appeared in the Northern Echo today as another decision against us was made without contacting us first. We have been deducted 5 points for failing to show at Leeholme BC, its a shame that we have been punished here for a league error. A formal complaint will be made against the League next week.

Although we are to battle agianst the league to revoke this it may be that relegation maybe a good thing this time round. We are a developing team and life in the 2nd Division may help our new bowlers. The 1st Division is currently beyond our ability and a few wins at a lower level will build confidence.

At this stage we feel a big mention should be made for the new bowlers from last season who have battled significantly and competed at a high level this year, we are proud of their achievements and improvements this year. The most improved players this year are Andy Bell, Simon Brodie, Richard Copeland and Paul Dobson, this is followed by a bowler who has made the step into one of our top bowlers in Martin Snelling.

The bowls world was shocked today with the news that South Park Bowls Clubs most successful rink was split today in our away game at Shildon BR. This was done for strategic reasons and not because their lead had a head full of magic. With Mr Bells move to the rink of Ken Wood and Scott Morland he knew he had a lot to prove. The game began well although the BR boys began to fight back. The lead was lost in the 20th end and with one end to go it was all to play for, a spectacular wood from super skip ken secured a 22 - 18 victory and one point for the SPBC boys.

It was quite ironic that Mr Bells usual rink lost on Bill Morlands bogey rink, this results in Mr Bell, age 27 from Darlington becoming the most successful player in the team. He had this to say “I’m shocked, it is quite amazing really. I guess the pressure is on now to keep on the winning side”.

The rumor is that a fight is developing to secure the services of Mr Bell for next weeks 2 important games. Theres one thing for certain his name is sure to be first on the team sheet.

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!!!

Sadly this week saw us thrashed 5-0 at Spennymoor A.
A far superior team gave the team what they deserved, we must now improve dramatically as we are languishing many points behind already at the bottom of the table.
Next week sees the last of our 4 death matches and sees 4 games ahead that we are capable of picking up wins from against Woodland, Barnard Castle and Shildon Town.

Although there are many plusses going into the new season we are left looking back on poor results at an early stage.

We were defeated at home to Leeholme 4-1 with B. Hopkins, A. Wilkes and M. Snelling being the only winners.  Then both teams were defeated in the Works League.  A Team defeated at home 2.5 to 1.5 and the B Team defeated 3-1 at the Dene against the JUC Club.

EBA action is getting underway but again not with the results wanted.  Bill Morland was defeated heavily at The RA by Tony Bousfield.  After a close start on what is the Countries worst bowling green 2 ends of a 3 and a 4 took the wind out of Bills sales and allowed Tony to eventually ease to victory.

The Mixed Fours Team of the full Hopkins family took place today also, despite leading for most of the game a disasterous last 3 ends where 12 shots were dropped ending their dream of National glory.

We face our first of four tough opening fixtures in the Distict League tomorrow night with a home game with Leeholme BC.

We are fielding a keen but inexperienced team and face top bowlers such as Colin Jefferson, former South Park Bowler Barry Attwood and Dave Quickmire.

It looks to be a hard game but at home we will battle and 3 points would be an excellent start to the season.

We have now received the fixtures for both the District and Works League and some tricky games lay ahead at the start of the season.

The District League conjures up 4 incredibly tough games against Leeholme, the RA, Spennymoor A and Shildon BR. All of these games are ones we usually don’t pick up many points against.

To try and avoid the bottom 2 we must pick up at least 8 points from these to get our season off to a good start.

The Works League has given us 2 knock-out games away from home to the 2 probably strongest teams in Cummins and Alpha Plus. Fingers crossed at least one of our teams can scrape through then we have a good hance against other opposition is the draw works in our favour.

The Darlington and District League meeting took place last week and it seems our club was the main topic of discussion.

Due to confusion over our secretaries address and that no letter was sent to us we missed the AGM and league meeting. This was frowned upon by many league teams, however no decision could be made and we are due to receive our fixture list anyday in the post.

A meeting and social gathering will be arranged upon receipt of these fixtures.

The Works League Meeting will take place on 9th March 2007 at Darlington RA.

another test