Wednesday 4th September was an unseasonably warm day, but a strong and gusty Westerly wind was present to test out the bowlers.  With everyone present, all eight first round matches took place,  On rink 1, on the grass, Mick Flynn was up against Barry Werfel.  With both players on the same handicap it was effectively a straight shootout.  Mick slowly drew away to reach 100 shots to Barry’s 80.  This margin was pretty much contant to the end, though Barry was down 146 to 126 and had a couple of good ends to close the gap a little. Final score Mick 150 and Barry 134.  On rink 2 Keith Edwards played Joe O’Donnell with Keith off minus 4 shots.  Keith removed this defecit on end 1 and there after pulled steadily away, including a couple of ends with a maximum score.  Final score was Keith 150 Joe 102.  On the next rink,3, Rick Reynolds played Kel Limbrick who also had a 4 shot advantage.  Rick held the lead throughout this match.  At end 14, Scores were quite close with Rick 76 and Kel 64.  Shortly after Rick won maximum scores on consecutive ends and started to draw away.  Final score Rick 150 and Kel 98.  Last game on the grass on rink 4 was Steve Day versus Chris Forrester.  Chris had 12 shots to his ledger at the start and used them to his advantage to take the early lead.  After ten end Chris lead 54-34 with Steve having taking back 2 shots from the handicap.  At end 20 the situation was the same with Steve behind 86-104.  This was the turning point of the match as Steve commenced to string together an extended period of good ends  This allowed him to take the lead 2 ends later and continue to draw ahead to win 150-136.  Over on the synthetic, Rink 7 had Robin Staples and Dave Riddle playing.  Dave started with 24 shots advantage.  In the early part of the game Robin reduced this advantage so that on end 18 he was only 2 shots behind, 77-79.  However on the next two ends Dave had two 9-1 scores and playing excellent bowls proceeded to strech his lead steadily to run out comfortable winner 150-125.  Gordon Lewis was playing John Edmonds on rink 8.  John had a 4 shot start.  Early advantage was to Gordon, 15-11 after 3 ends.  Next end John scored a 10 and proceeded to pull away.  With all the ends appearing to be very tight by end 20 John was leading 110-86.  At 25 ends John lead 134-102. A swing towards Gordon, with John possibly beginning to tire, saw Gordon rapidly closing the gap.  Another couple of ends might have seen Gordon the winner, but he ran out of time and John got home 150-145.  Rink 9 hosted Clive Neutze and Kevin Jones with 8 shots handicap to Kevin  End 8 saw Kevin pick up a maximum score of 10 shots and he was leading 35-27.   Clive took over the lead on end 17 when he returned the compliment with a 10 score and the lead at 81-72.  Clive was not headed again and won the match 150-132.  The final game was Bob Edwards against Brian Porter with Brian starting with a 4 shot advantage.  Just one maximun 10 score to Bob who lead throughout and was winner 150-114.  Looking at the score cards consistency is definitely the name of the game, with players that gave away 10 shots on an end often seeing the match slip away from them.  Quarter finals will be played next Wednesday 11th September.  Loses of the first round will be markers for these matches.  Thanks to the markers for the first round and especially our two lady markkers Gail Fraser and Alison Pryce.