SATURDAY'S defeat at Caerau Athletic brought an end to the Penarth Bowling Club's WBA Carruthers Shield ambitions for another year.

All four rinks went down on a difficult green, resulting in a comprehensive 95-62 win for the home team.

Both rinks skipped by Dave Clements and Dave Dalby struggled hard but went down 12-26 and 12-24 respectively. Although the Bob Hill and Clive Fry rinks battled to keep Penarth in the game, the overall deficit proved too much and they also went down. Clive's rink led 15-7 at the halfway stage, but frittered away their advantage to lose by two shots (20-22), and Bob also led part way through but could not hang on and lost 18-23.

This was a valiant effort by all players but the task was, unfortunately, just too much.

However, all was not despair at the club as the PG2 side rattled up their first win of the campaign by beating Pontyclun on their own green.

Trepidation must have been the word that captain Lawrence looked up in the latest Oxford edition as Pontyclun are always very competitive and difficult to beat on their own patch. His squad raised their game to new levels and won on three rinks for an overall 83-65 victory. Ron Maggs returned to winning ways with an excellent 24-13 success and both Peter Small and John Whitfield led their rinks down the winning trail and secured points by margins of 23-18 and 19-13 respectively.

Roger Gidman, however, went down by four shots (17-21).

This was a superb result for the team after last week's mauling by St Fagans.

The midweek Munro encounter brought a visit to Rectory Road by old adversaries Sully. Fielding a strong side, Sully posed a real threat to Penarth's 100 per cent record in the competition, but the home side were not to be outdone and, with three rinks successful and one drawing, they took 13 very valuable points from the 72-51 victory.

Colin Grant led his rink of Terry Buckingham, Rob Grant and Haydn Trow to a splendid 22-9 win which was the backbone of the overall victory. Excellent wins were chalked up by Clive Fry (20-13) and Dave Dalby (14-13), with Dave Clements and his merry men earning the final point in a 16-16 draw.