BOWLS REPORT - September 30th 2011

There was a disappointing start to the county seniors league for the Sunderland B team as they lost their opening fixture at Darlington 5-0 (43-24). George Gibson’s quartet of Peter Bulmer, Tony Wood and Tony Grimes came the nearest to sneaking a rink point as they only went down 11-8. Ronnie Hart, John Banks, Bobby Adams and Billy Conway let slip a early 5-0 lead to finish 14-8 down while Bobby Usher, Vic Hendry, Alfie Ferguson and Terry Todd never recovered from a 13-0 deficit and finished 18-8 down. The B team’s next fixture is against Park View on Wednesday 5th October with a 1230 start, the earlier than usual start is to ensure the game actually gets played due to the opposition having problem’s mustering a team at the usual 1430 start. The A team were also due to open their campaign with a home tie against The Parks, however the visitors decided to turn up 24 hours early so the game was cancelled and is currently being rearranged for the 13th or 27th October, the A team are due to travel to Gateshead this week.

Crowtree hosted the Durham Select side as they faced Sunderland in the first of the two annual friendlies, a strong Durham Select side took the honours running out 118-80 winners. The visitors won on five of the six rinks with only D.Kerrigan, J.Kerrigan, A.Bevan and A.Ferguson record a Sunderland win.

Scores (Sunderland skips first) – A.Ferguson 16-15 M.Baines, JS.Thompson 7-26 D.Barron, W.Conway 13-20 K.Hartley, T.Todd 19-25 D.Morgan, L.Todd 14-19 E.Weightman

Following on from his Worthing success Stanley based David Bolt continued his rich vein of form in singles by qualifying for the World Singles Championships at Potters in January, Bolt qualified by playing in the Carlisle qualification section to set up a opening tie against Greg Harlow at Potters. At the qualifiers Bolt defeated Karen Edmondson 1½-½, Stuart Bebbington 1½-½, Mark Dawes 2-0 on the tie break, Mark Nanson 2-1 on the tie break before finally defeating Jason Parkinson 2-0. Bolt’s hopes of qualifying in the pairs were dashed at the first round, partnering Michael Laydon the duo went down 2-0 to John & Aaln Foulds.

There was some disappointing news regarding the casual bowls proposal’s at Crowtree when a late change in the agreement by the centre resulted in the excepted rollout this weekend to be suspended, however as an interim measure the club’s committee has managed to arrange for casual sessions to be available Monday to Friday 1230-1430 and there will be limited casual green space   available during the normal league sessions. Anyone interested in casual bowls is advised to read the notices within the bowls hall.

There is an opportunity to see more international bowls at Stanley next weekend as the South west Durham club will be hosting the Under 18 international series, all four home countries plus the Channel Isles will be fielding teams which will compete in singles, pairs, triples, fours and team events, the action starts on 8th October at 9.30am and concludes on the 9th October, England are the current holders having won the series on the previous two occasions.