HAVING won their section of the league, the Indoor Bowls Sully Senior team qualified for the National play-offs and were drawn to play Selway (Llanelli) in the quarter finals at Pontardawe on Tuesday, February 10.

Selway were represented by a number of former internationals and Sully was expecting a tough afternoon but with a strong side available on the day Sully was confident of success.

The Pontardawe rink was running at a nice pace with players able to play good drawing bowls on all hands which allowed for a good game proven by some early excellent bowling.

After the first five ends the game was level at 17 – 17 with Brian Griffiths’ rink the only Sully rink behind, down by seven.

The game continued to be close and by the tenth end there was only two shots in the game with Sully ahead 35 – 33.

Over the next five ends the Sully rinks of Fred Phillips and Brian Griffiths were one shot ahead and level respectively, whilst the rink of Ken McLeod took nine shots to lead 19 – 13, unfortunately this coincided with Dave Snellings rink losing nine shots without reply during this period leaving the Sully Club still three shots ahead 54 – 51.

The match which was going into the final quarter was evenly poised but the luck began to go against the Sully rinks especially that of McLeod’s with two deliveries on two consecutive ends in particular giving the opposition two fours, one from a weighted bowl from McLeod which hit the jack, which bounced back off a back bowl back up the green to four woods belonging to Selway.

The other four came from a misdirected bowl from the opposition skip which came off an outside bowl and moved the jack for a count of four, this appeared to deflate the Sully rink who, from being 19 – 13 up, did not score on the last six ends eventually losing 19 – 27.

The rink of Dave Snelling lost their way after holding seven on the ninth end until the Selway skip drew the shot with his last wood resulting in Snellings rink only winning two out of the next 12 ends.

The rinks of Phillips and Griffiths were fighting hard to cover the other rinks but the difference was too great and both were attempting to pull off difficult shots to pull back the deficit.

Griffiths’ rink finally succumbed, losing 16 – 19, whilst the rink of Roy Richards, Mike Doyle, Brian Foscolo and Fred Phillips ended up as Sully’s only winning rink 20 – 17.

It was a great effort from the Sully team and the loss by 15 shots wasn’t a fair reflection on the game, however the players are already looking forward to next season.

Overall Result Sully 70 – 85 Selway.

Rink Scores Sully first:-

D Snelling 15 v 22 P Richardson

B Griffiths 16 v 19 K Thomas

K McLeod 19 v 27 D Davies

F Phillips 20 v 17 B Kingdon