IT WAS seven days of mixed fortunes for Penarth Bowling Club in last week’s games with two victories and three defeats in the matches played.

The highlight of the week at Rectory Road was a superb performance by Rob Grant in the section final of the Welsh under-25s singles competition held at Dinas Powys on Wednesday last.

The early stages of this enthralling encounter saw Rob’s opponent, Richard George of Llantwit Major dominate proceedings and, after 10 ends Rob was trailing 4-14. However a stirring recovery saw the scores tightly balanced at 13-14 six ends later and thereafter the match was extremely tight with the outcome always in doubt.

Despite lying “game” on two separate ends. It was not to be the Penarth bowler’s day and by the finish Rob was agonisingly adrift by a single shot at 20-21. Congratulations from everyone at Rectory Road for a magnificent performance.

Somewhat unusually, the club had no competitive men's matches last week with no games scheduled for the weekend and the Munro Cup match with Cadoxton falling victim to events in Euro 16 on Wednesday, so it was left to captain Brian Fisher and his Alliance team to keep the flag flying.

Tuesday produced a tightly fought match with Cardiff Athletic with the five shot win owing much to the efforts of the Colin Hicks rink, where Colin, ably backed by Claudio Gent, Brian Hocking and Dave Ingram won 20-10.

A solid performance by Dave Hilldrup, where the “crafty cockney” teamed up with George Mackie, Bowen The Books and Ken Lloyd prevailed 14-10, tipped the proceedings in Penarth’s favour by the close.

The Alliance men did not fare quite so well in Thursday’s game against Murch BC, going down by 12 shots overall. The bright spot for Rectory road in this one was a rousing 23-13 win by skip, Roger Gidman with Tony Thomas, Brian Fisher and Brian Hocking.

The ladies’ recent run of good form, sadly, hit the buffers somewhat last week with two reversals in the Double Rink competition, with the best performance coming in a substantial win in the Afternoon League.

The team found the slow running green at Romilly Park on Tuesday a far cry from the fast surface at Rectory Road, and, consequently, faced with a strong home side, they struggled to make any real impact in this one, going down 21-42 overall.

The trip to Millwood on Thursday, proved to be a much more successful outing however and Penarth recovered their recent good form to win on all three rinks by 57-34. Leading the way was the foursome comprising Norma Duggan, Barbara Brown, Kath Jenkins and skip Tricia Brinkworth (23-10).

Two solid victories for Lorraine Palmer, Diana Willcocks, Wendy Grant and Betty Jones (16-11) and June Williams, Jill Gaskell, Sue Croll and Belinda Price (18-13) put the issue well beyond doubt.

Sadly, this revival in fortunes did not extend to the Double Rink match with Whitchurch on Thursday when both rinks were defeated in a 27-42 loss.