Key matches played out at the top of bowls club first division
With the indoor season at Boston Indoor Bowls Club entering the last month, there were two rounds of matches in the Orchard Health Group First Division last week.
Second in the table, Invaders, took maximum points from their games, while leaders Holland Fen and the teams in fourth and fifth, Optimists and Breakaways, scored eight points. Third-placed Strollers could only manage four points of the twelve available.
Invaders met Royal Mail, winning 22-13 eventually, following a close battle that left the score at 14-13 after fifteen ends, and 23-10, then trounced Dynamics, 38-5 and 24-8.
Holland Fen beat Optimists 4-2, Martin Tomlin winning 28-8 while Matt Whyers secured two points for Optimists by winning 20-17.They also beat Golfers 4-2, but Golfers pushed them to the limit in two competitive games. Alex Tomlin won 25-19, but only after scoring six shots in the final two ends, while Barry Wilson led throughout his game to take two points by winning 18-14.
Optimists’ second game saw them take all the points off Strollers to narrow the gap in the table to just six points. Matt Whyers’ rink won 18-9 and Andy Reeson’s 16-13.Strollers won their other game against Parthians 4-2, a close affair as they claimed the shot aggregate by just two shots, winning one rink 19-10 and losing the other 11-18.
Breakaways took two points against Golfers, as Nick Whitmore won 19-16 having led from the start. For Golfers, Barry Wilson’s rink again came up trumps to win 23-13 and claim the extras. Against bottom-of-the-table Royal Mail, Breakaways won 24-11 on Mark Brown’s rink, but only by the narrowest of margins on Mike Rymer’s, 18-17, having come back from 6-17 down.
A40 held onto sixth place with six points from their two games, beating Nomads 4-2, winning 21-9 and losing 15-16, and then taking two more off Parthians for winning 18-10, but losing 13-26 on the other rink.
Another team taking six points from the week’s matches was IBC, locked into eighth place, five behind Parthians. They also beat Nomads 4-2, Ian Smith’s rink winning from the front, 24-8, while the score on the second rink was close throughout, only decided on the final end in favour of Nomads, 20-18. They took another two points against Dynamics, winning Steve Skelton’s rink 21-11, but the other rink was comprehensively beaten 4-23 by Graham Wilkinson.
Desperados lead at the top of Cammacks Division Two has stretched to ten points after this week’s matches which saw them beat Vectors 5-1, winning 25-20 and drawing 19-19, while Hotspurs lost 2-4 against Vikings, winning one rink 20-16, but losing the other 6-25.
Burtons remain third after beating Woodpeckers 4-2, Chris Hill’s rink dominating their game to win 30-5, but losing the other 14-16 to Richard Cullen’s Woodpeckers.
Kingfishers moved above Woodpeckers into fourth after beating Central 4-2, Ian Pryke’s rink in complete charge to win 26-3, but lost the other 8-20.
Finally, Amateurs took all the points against Phantoms with wins of 18-10 and 20-14.