Maddrell & Kennish Triumph
The Friends Provident Mens doubles drawn partners was played on Sunday 16th September at Port St Mary. An entry of 38 players were split into group A and group B, with group A being mainly division one players. One player from each group were drawn out to make up what should be 19 fairly evenly matched pairs.
Three preliminary matches were needed to get down to the last 16. Tim Williams & Bernard Thackrah beat Bernie Durcan & Derek Cain 21-17. Sid Bolton & Nathan Cooil defeated Derek Allen & Ray Watterson 21-15, whilst Lee Dawson & Karl Parker won 21-16 against Glynn Hargraves & Tony Hart.
Round one had several close games, with the closest being John Kennish & Ray Maddrell squeezing past Dave McCabe & Walter McCarthy 21-20.
Losing out at the quarter final stage were Lee Dawson & Karl Parker, Mike Hargraves & Austin Hart, Matthew Keggen & Paul Quirk along with Edward Carlyle & Ryan Hargraves.
The first semi-final saw Sid Bolton & Nathan Cooil (South Ramsey/Castletown) take on John Kennish & Ray Maddrell (South Ramsey/Port St Mary), with the latter pair going through quite comfortably 21-10. In the second semi-final, Paul Skelly & Jordan Drewett (Port St Mary/Castletown) went through almost as comfortably 21-13 against Wayne Roberts & Dave Saxon (both Port St Mary).
A very good final followed between the top two teams of the day, there were many tight ends, but in the end John Kennish & Ray Maddrell were just too strong for Paul Skelly & Jordan Drewett winning 21-14.
The presentation was made by Ann Maddrell, who thanked the sponsors Friends Provident, everyone at Port St Mary bowling club that helped with the running of the competition and to everyone that took part. Ann then introduced Katy Williams of Friends Provident to present the prizes.