The 2021 Pennant season is under way with round one completed on February 27th .  After the first week Bowral has one team on top of the ladder and two teams languishing  on the bottom of their ladders.  As our green was not ready after it’s mini restoration the Grade 2 and Grade 6 relinquished their home advantage and played away.  For the Grade 2 it was not too much a disadvantage as most of the team members have been away from Bowral playing in Zone events and the green surface would be much the same.  Wallacia hosted Bowral and with a talented team were expected to provide strong opposition.  So credit to Bowral who came away with a great win, winning two of the three rinks and winning 61-44 on the “big Board”for a 9 points to 1 win.  Ashley Lewis, Russell Knight, Dugald Braithwaite and Mick Spong lead all the game.  Leading 14-9 after 14 ends they won the next six end to be 22-9 up, losing 3 shots on the final end to finish winners 22-12.  A similar score of 22-14 for Carl Spilker,  Glynn Phillips, Paul Leverett and Josh Woodcock.  They were never really challenged, 12-6 after 10 ends, 16-8 after 15 ends and on to that final score 22-14.  Stephen Della, Nathan Boyers, Kevin Stafford  and Mick Armstrong came ever so close to making it a clean sweep for Bowral going down by one shot 18-17.  After 10 ends Bowral lead 11-7, at 15 ends the lead was 14-10 but Wallacia drew level at end 20 on 17 shots each.  One shot to Wallacia gave them the smallest of wins. A great start to the competition.

Grade 6 and Grade 7 did not fair as well.  With most of the players in these teams playing on the overly fast synthetic it was a shock to travel to play on the two slowest greens in the Zone. Grade 6 lost 10-0 to Taralga. Ted McPhee, Bob Crowley, Gail Fraser and Jim Neely came closest to winning a point for Bowral.  They trailed 11-12 after 10 ends and only added one shot to trail 12-20 at end 15.  A great fight back saw them win the next five ends and draw level at 20 all on end 20.  Taralga was able to claim the one shot on that last end for a 21-20 win.  Graham Hunt, Glen Giese, Julie Hayden and Robin Staples won the first two ends but by end four Taralga had caught up and never looked threatened from there onwards.  Losing four shots on the last end did not help the Bowral score which ended up 13-26 to Teralga.  Noel Fraser, Steve Day, Dennis Beatty and David Coltman also struggled on the slower green and won four ends to finish down 6-28.                            Grade 7 can at least boast that they came home with one point thanks to the team of Kevin Jones, Richard Denman, Bill Meredith and Clive Neutze.  This team was down 7-2 after 4 ends but steadied quickly to level the score 8 all on end 9.  At end 13 score was still even on 11 shots and no change at 16 ends even on 13 shots.  Clive and team then won the next four ends picking up 9 shots which gave them a 22-14 shot win.  Well done.  Brian Porter with Andy Connor, David Noble and Reta South were next best going down 16-23.  The game was even in the initial stages with 5-5 at end 6,  11 all at end 12.  Four shots to Bundanoon on the next end saw them make the break and ease away to a  23-16 win.  Final team was Keith Edwards, Kel Limbrick, Tony Oates and Bob Edwards.  Not a very flattering score for this game so maybe the least said the better.  Bundanoon won “Big Board” 96-41 and 9-1 points for the match.  Next week Grade 2 travel all the way to Glenbrook, Grade 6 to Picton and Grade 7 to Camden.  Hope Grade 2 continue with another win and the other two grades find the rinks more to their liking.

Sunday 28th February at Bowral on the synthetic green the first round of the Bowral Minor Singles took place.  Carl Spilker had a 31-18 win over Glen Giese.  Probably not as easy a win as the score would suggest with Glen putting up a good showing.  Would think Carl would be strong favourite but there are plenty of other good players who will keep him honest.  In the game between Ted McPhee and Ton DeGreenlaw it was Ted who started the stronger and ran away to a 13-0 lead.  Possibly Tom has been playing Zone games on grass and took time to adjust to the speed of the synthetic.  He obviously did , for he staged a strong come back as Ted wilted after a heavy previous day at Taralga and Tom dominated the latter stages of the game to win 31-17.  Final game was Peter Morales and Terry Norwood.  Do not have a score card but it was a tight game as indicated by the score 31-28.  Peter, an experienced and very good bowler is hard to beat so it is a credit to Terry that he was able to win this match by a slender 3 shots.  Second round of this event will be played next Sunday 8th March with games both morning and afternoon so if you are entered please check the draw.