South Park Bowls Club

This week see 2 big games for Scott Morland. Pairs and Hospital Cup games take place at Leeholme and Fishburn over the next 2 nights.

These are both tricky games but there seems to be a bit of confidence in the camp that we can win some of these competitions this year.

Last night Scott Morland progressed to the semi-final of the Lord Younger singles beating Mal Cundick of North Lodge 21-10.

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.

After a hard Darlington & District League season and only at the half way point relegation is already a guaranteed.
Playing short and a team full of inexperienced players has meant us only gaining 3 points this season.

Tonight sees us at home to Brinkburn Dene who have had a surprising good run this season. They are gifted with a big home green advantage and normally at South Park we would expect to win but on this occasion a 3-2 defeat would be an FA Cup winning achievement.

Simon Brodie managed to combat a win against the clubs superstar Scott Morland last night 21-14. After not bringing a marker as home player Scott reluctantly let him play on his favourite rink and ignored his moaning early on as Simon was 6-1 down.

However credit where credits due, Simon managed to take his finger out of his behind and turn on a show. A good competitive game ended in his favour. Scott will be furious noe if he doesn’t go on to win it and quoted “I’ll just have to beat my Dad in the main club championship on friday!”

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.