The battle for the Forbes Road COVID League title is narrowed down to six players

The top nine players started the week with a chance of the Forbes Road Covid League title but it is now down to the top six.

Coming up is a crucial week as the winner of Blue Group will join the top two in Green for the final chance to compete for the trophy.

The Green group this week saw Helen Holroyd and Dave Toynton in a close battle but the game went to Dave 19–11, but Helen was on top form to beat Pete Sharman 25-11.

This left Pete needing to beat Dave, but he was never in it and lost 23-8.

Pete is now back down to the Blue group but still in with a chance of the title if he can bounce back next week.

Gordon Neal made his first move in the Blue group by edging out Bill Yuill. At 11 ends it was 10-10 but Gordon took eight of the next 11 ends to win 22-16.

Next up saw Janet Loughran take on Gordon and after seven ends was 10-1 up.

By the time they reached 15 ends it was 15-12 to Janet but she then turned on the pressure to win 22-14.

Bill now needed to beat Janet to stay in the top six.

Bill started well and lead 7-5 after six ends but by the 16th Janet was up 14-9 and went on to win 20 -13.

Bill dropped out of contention and Janet back in the top three.

The Purple group saw Trevor Dunnington up against Michael Gooderson and Ted Bloodworth, who he not previously beaten.

Against Ted he lead 10-0 at six ends and at end 14 it was 21-2. Ted rallied a little but went down 27-6.

Next it was Michael but this was a different game, atzsix ends the score was 5-5 but by the time they reached end 12 It was 16 -5 to Michael, who ran out a 22-13 winner.

The last game in the group saw Ted needing a big win against Michael to give himself any chance of staying within sight of the title, but started badly and Michael raced to 15-0 in only seven ends.

This appeared to knock the stuffing out of Ted and the game ran away from him with Michael running away with a 33-5 win, which moved him into sixth place and still in with a chance of winning the league.

Could Michael be running into form at the right time? This is Michael's highest position so far.

Orange group started with Tony Hall against John Mitchell. This was a good close game throughout at 10 ends they were all square and at 17 it was 10-10 .

John picked up a 2 on the 18 th which proved to be the turning point as Tony could only get one on the last end to lose 12-13.

Tony now had to beat John Thorogood but at 10 ends John lead 16-4 and went on to win 31-9 winner to top the group and send Tony down.

Brown group saw Harry Maddison take on Tom Carter twice. Inexperienced Tom has been scoring better each match and at nine ends it was just 8-7 to Harry and 15 ends it was 20-10 to Harry, but Tom managed to score a respectable 16 shots to Harry’s 26.

The reverse fixtures saw Harry start slowly and at four ends Thomas led 4-3 - but Harry then scored 3, 4, 4, 2 and 4 and by the time they reached end 15 was 29-7 in front.

Tom did come back but eventually went down 34-13.

Red Group saw Ray Loughran find his form again and had two wins 32-9 and 23-10 to move into Orange group.

This left Graham Taylor and Syd Oldfield fighting hard not to go down.

At five ends Syd lead 4-1, by the time they reached 10 ends Graham lead 10-5. Syd started to apply pressure and on end 17 the score was 13-15 to Graham.

They shared the last four ends and Graham ran out the 18-16 winner.

This sends Syd back to Brown group.

A four rink match played at home to a strong Frieston team did not go well for Forbes Road with only Pete Sharman’s rink winning.

Helen Holroyd lost heavily to Tanya Brown, David Toynton was never in it against John Stray’s trio and Ray Loughran’s rink went down to Keith Posey.