Ladies’ Veterans’ County Championship
Wolverhampton is still recovering from the first half of this week when it was invaded by a group of Manx ladies, of a certain age, who were there to play in the Veterans County Championship.
The event was staged in a round-robin format on four greens, two at Woodfield Social BC and two at Pennfields BC, the final stages then moving to a third venue at Penn BC.
In the early stages each green had four teams playing a round-robin, the winner of each group moving to Penn BC to play in the semi-finals.
The Manx team were in a group with Shropshire, Lancashire and North Midlands and started their campaign against Shropshire, on a green which was tricky and very speedy, getting faster as the day progressed in the very warm, sunny conditions. Many struggled to find a length, although we did have two winners in Joyce Kelly and Mavis Franks with Margaret Tasker just losing out 14-15.
In the second match Lancashire were in fine form winning all eight games, with the two best Manx players being Mavis Franks with 13 points and Joyce Kelly scoring 12 against Manx Festival regular Joyce Jones.
Margaret Tasker was the lone winner in the final game against North Midlands, with Ann Holllingworth and Maureen Payne both reaching 12points.
Lancashire won the group, and moved to Penn BC to play Yorkshire in the semi-final. Yorkshire were beaten by Warwick and Worcestershire in a final that eventually finished under floodlights at 10.30pm.