LAST Saturday, Cardiff Athletic were the visitors to Rectory Road for the final PG1 fixture of 2014. This game turned out to contain a wicked twist as Penarth took to the green not expecting much out of the contest. The battle on the day seemed to be who would take second place and promotion out of Cardiff Athletic and Penarth Windsor.

At the end of the afternoon Cardiff had secured second place despite a 10 - 4 reversal. Windsor had been beaten at home by Mackintosh (shock horror). The exasperating fact which evolved as Captain Phil sat down for post match refreshments was that had Penarth taken all four rinks, which they looked well on track to do, they would have secured 2nd spot by one point and achieved promotion.

After 15 ends Penarth led by 17 shots with all four rinks holding a lead. The end result was a win for Penarth by 14 shots but only two rinks managed to maintain their advantage. The back bone of the win was provided by Nick Chandler, Dave Clements, Colin Hicks and Gareth Rosser with a 25 - 14 victory. This was backed up by a deserved six shot (21 - 15) win by Dave Dalby, Don Shirley, Reg Jones and Peter Needham. The rink skipped by Bob Lewis surrendered a three shot lead on the 19th end to lose by one shot on the very last end.

Colin Grant's rink is not used to losing, but after dropping a seven on the 17th end, this seemed to be the inevitable result. However he rallied his troops to draw level at 22 - 22 with two ends to go. The final result was defeat by 22 - 24.

A great game of bowls which could have achieved so much more. Next year guys.

On Friday afternoon previous, a most important game took place pairing the Alliance men against a Ladies select side. Only five cards have been provided after the game (were there six?) and these show a resounding win for the Ladies by 89 - 81). Pride of place goes to Joyce Allen, Pat Reynolds, Jill Gaskell and Norma Duggan who battered poor old Haydn Trow and his luckless rink running up an impressive score of 30 shots to 4. This was after Haydn had raced in to a two shot lead after two ends.

Sue Croll led by example to skip Kath Jenkins, Diana Willcox and Coral Regan to a fine win (19 - 9) against the much senior John Bowen and his crew. Colin Hicks' rink did not fare much better losing out to Regina Jones (19 - 14).

Both Ron Maggs (24 - 10) and Ken Brinkworth (30 - 11) used their many years of unfair experience to muster wins against the valiant rinks of Betty Jones and Elizabeth Coleman. No doubt the embarrassment felt by the male of the species will have faded by now.

Nick Chandler