SULLY Sports Bowls Club opened their season late, a combination of Covid regulations, and the state of the green, so with no league or cup fixtures, they arranged a couple of friendlies with local rivals Sully Bowls Club, and Romilly Bowls Club, to add an extra touch of competition to the internal club championships.

Because of Covid distancing regs, these games were reduced to rinks of triples, rather than the usual fours.

Wednesday evening, 22nd July, saw the Sports entertain their village rivals Sully Bowls, and ended up losing on all four rinks, despite that late in the game, it looked like that both sides would take two rinks each.

On K Aguis’ it was nip and tuck throughout, with both teams winning 9 of the 18 ends, but the home triple eventually went down by a single shot.

Both sides also won 9 rinks apiece on L Roman’s rink, where it was even at 6 shots each after 10 ends.

A disastrous 11th end saw the Sports concede 4 shots, which in after very evenly balanced tussle, they failed to recover the deficit, and went down by 2 shots.

C Coomber’s rink had a slow start, and were down 1 – 6 after 7 ends, but their fightback was cruelly cut short when conceding 4 shots on the 15th end, going down overall by 7 shots.

G Trickett’s rink had a nightmare start, only scoring 1 shot in the opening 11 ends, and despite edging the remaining 7 ends, were heavily beaten by 15 shots.

Rink Scores:

J Pearce, A Fitt, C Coomber 10-17;

B Knight, J Harries, G Trickett 7-22;

B Powell, R Gallivan, L Romans 12-14;

D Burbidge, P Holland, K Agius 12-13.

Last Saturday, 25th July, Romilly Bowls Club were the visitors, and having started bowling earlier in the season, and getting a couple of ‘matches’ under their belts, the extra practice proved decisive as they inflicted a 2nd four rink defeat on the Sports in four days.

K Aguis’ rink raced into a 5 shot lead after only 4 ends, but then conceded 8 shots over the next 3 ends.

Going into the last 3 ends they were 8 shots down, and bowling their best of the afternoon pulled back 4 shots, but still fell short.

After an even start on L Roman’s rink, Romilly took four ends in a row from the 6th end, scoring 7 shots to lead by 8.

The home trio then hit back to win 4 of the next 6 ends, taking 6 shots in the process to reduce the deficit to 2, with 3 ends left, but the visitors regrouped and won them all, stretching their winning margin to 6 shots.

C Coomber’s rink were 5-4 up after 9 ends, the halfway point, but Romilly, having scored a single on the 9th, won the next 3 ends, scoring 10 shots in the process. All seemed lost for the Sports, but taking the next 5 ends, and scoring 8 shots.

The match went into the final end with the visitors leading by 1 shot, and to their great delight they squeezed a single to clinch a 2 shot win.

Rink Scores:

J Pearce; A Fitt, C Coomber 13-15;

P Collier; P Holland, G Trickett 9-25;

B Powell, R Gallivan, L Romans 10-16;

J Harries, D Burbidge, K Aguis 14-18.

This Saturday will be used to launch the internal club championship matches, with the next match to be played on the following Saturday, 8th August, away to Romilly Bowls, commencing at 2pm.