Seven-Up extend advantage
Leaders Seven-Up extended their advantage over the weekend in the Manx Petroleum sponsored Outdoor Winter League Bowling Club, mainly due to the second and third placed outfits slugged out a fairly low scoring result.
Most teams have drafted in new players this winter and as a consequence the league is a bit more open and in fact it has only just had its third maximum win, all too different sides.
A team yet to hit that top mark is Seven-Up, but they came very close again on Saturday and dropped just two chalks in a comfortable win against Castletown Corkers.
Struggling to hit the form of earlier in the campaign are Beachcombers, but they overcame opponents Govags with a 16 point margin. They next took on leaders Seven-Up and even though they won three games, their average fell, resulting in them dropping a place down the table.
Last placed Govags headed back to west with two defeats from their outing, after losing to Castletown Corkers, and will be disappointed not to have closed the gap at the bottom.
A repeat set of fixtures from a few weeks previous took place on Sunday with three of them having the same outcome; while Incredabowls and Spare Parts improved their tallies from last time by nine points apiece.
The afternoon kicked off with the season’s third maximum and the first for current champions Incredabowls, recorded when they beat Castletown Cannons; this while Louie’s Angels strolled home against Spare Parts to keep the league’s last unbeaten run going.
As the sun set on another weekend of bowls, the Parts got the better of Castletown Cannons and finally the biggest clash of the two days saw Louie’s Angels win and maintain the same margin between themselves and their opponents Incredabowls, who are just ahead in second.
A session which saw the chasing pair slip further behind the leaders after they both dropped crucial points – a total of 45 between them. Perhaps surprisingly all four fixtures involving the top three sides have seen relatively low scores – 69-78; 69 apiece; 67-57 and now 64-71, although the most points have been secured by the Angels with 207 and two wins, average 69.
Incredabowls have 202 (67.3) from three encounters; and having just played two, Seven-Up are averaging 67.5, so it looks like the title will be won and lost on how they get on in their other fixtures.
A good entry of 39 attended the midweek round robin and competed in two sets of triples. Alec Taylor, Doug Allan and Jack Lee were winners, in second came Derek Clarke, Steve Parker and Pauline Worrall, and third place went to Jo Smith, Elaine McElroy and Trish Bull.
The black jack group top three were Bernie Thackrah, Ray Kelly and David Galbraith, followed by Sheila Preston, Peter Karran and Sefton Dent and in third, John Marsden, Irene Cowin and Victor Corlett.