Last week the club held the Major Pairs and Major Triples Championship finals concurrently.

The pairs featured a clash between the duo of Greg Dickman and Terry Johnson up against the well credentialed pairing of Col Lindsay and Graham Meany.

Meanwhile, the triples provided the opportunity for two newly formed teams to display their combined talents when Jake McHutchison, Jim Johnson, and Trevor Bardsley took on Dave Atkinson, Bob Ballantyne, and John Deale. The games were contested under great circumstances, on typically well-presented greens, and under brilliant paradise-like weather conditions.  

The pairs battle was a typical final and after 12 ends of lively and competitive action, Graham and Col held a slender two-shot advantage when leading 16 to 14. The sides traded mutual fours on the next two ends before Col and Graham again gathered some control over the scoreboard. Ultimately, after 21 ends of enthralling pairs competition played at a very high level, it was Col Lindsay and Graham Meany who had the final say over Greg Dickman and Terry Johnson by 29 shots to 25.

The triples finale also produced bowls of an extremely high calibre with all six bowlers demonstrating a tremendous understanding of the game and an arsenal of shots to be feared. After 12 ends of the mandatory 25, Dave Atkinson, Bob Ballantyne, and John Deale led by a single shot in a low-scoring encounter, nine shots to eight. However, Jake McHutchison, in a player of the match performance, showed maturity and skill above his years in the game and produced a sequence of lead bowls that enabled his partners, Jim Johnson and Trevor Bardsley, to construct heads difficult for their opposition to counter. The subsequent outcome was a series of sustained advancements on the scoreboard that enabled Jake, Jim, and Trevor to lead by 21 shots to 13 coming into the final five ends of play. Although Dave, Bob, and John won three of these ends, Trevor’s trio managed to limit the damage to take the championship by 23 shots to 16.

Don Freeman