The Island Bowls team is facing an uncertain future following the collapse of Citywing.

The Isle of Man County Crown Green Bowling team has been competing at the highest level in the UK for the past two years and is set to play their first county match of the season in May against Yorkshire.

The county matches consist of home and away ties involving two 12-man squads. One squad travels to the away green, while the local team hosts 12 visiting players from the opposition.

In the past, the IOM team has chartered a 19-seater Citywing plane, which flew the IOM team to the UK and returned with the visiting bowlers. An early-evening departure took visiting bowlers back to the UK and then returned with the away squad.

This arrangement has worked well and was set to continue this year, however, the collapse of Citywing means that Manx bowlers have fixtures in May, June and July but no transport to take them.

The current timings of scheduled commercial flights means that travel off island and return cannot happen in one day – a requirement of the IOM’s inclusion in the County Bowls set up.

The organization committee have worked tirelessly to come up with a logistical and financially suitable solution however we haven’t found one yet.

We only have a short time before a decision needs to be made to withdraw or have an alternative plan so if anyone knows is in a position to help we’d be happy to speak with them.
<strong>Neil Withers – Chairman</strong>
<a href=”mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a>
<strong>07624483666</strong>

All 2017 fixtures have been uploaded onto the website and you will be able to find them in the various sections.

Opens

Some clubs are still to confirm their open details to the association. As soon as all of the information has been received the open pages will be created and published. For now just a list of the opens and dates is available.

Season Schedule

It was agreed by the Men’s Executive Committee that the Men’s Night League will run through September. This has allowed the League and Rayner to be spread more evenly through the season but the Mixed Team Competition can now be integrated into the calendar.

Mixed Team Competition

Starting in May the teams entered will be split into groups of 4 and play home and away against the other teams in their group. The 6 group matches will take place between May and August with the Semi Final and Final being held on neutral greens in September.

The draw and fixtures for this competition will be announced soon.

Updates

There is a new Stats section on the website where all player profiles are now stored. When viewing a player profile you can now compare head to head records and see player ranking positions. The rankings are based on all competitive matches since 2012.

Players profiles can still be accessed as before from merit and team pages by clicking on the players name.

Captains

Clubs are still to confirm captains and the pages have been removed until this data is available.

Whilst much of the information is the same you can now search directly for a player and compare head to head two players. There are also ranking tables for the Men, Ladies and Winter League – the rankings roll year to year and every competitive game played attributes to the rankings. The rankings table will be updated every couple of weeks to include recent games played.

Winter League 2017

Due to the winter league introducing the doubles and some of these matches being played as 1v1 or 2v1 the individual scores cannot be imported as they break the website data structures. This is the sole reason for their being no stats or merit information from the winter league.

Men Night League Fixture Download

Use the links below to download the fixture lists in excel format

• Download ==> All Fixtures
• Download ==> Ballaugh Fixtures
• Download ==> Castleown Fixtures
• Download ==> Douglas Fixtures
• Download ==> Finch Hill Fixtures
• Download ==> Marown Fixtures
• Download ==> Nobles Fixtures
• Download ==> North Ramsey Fixtures
• Download ==> Onchan Fixtures
• Download ==> Peel Sunset Fixtures
• Download ==> Port Erin Fixtures
• Download ==> Port St Mary Fixtures
• Download ==> South Ramsey Fixtures

• Download ==> All Fixtures
• Download ==> Ballaugh Fixtures
• Download ==> Castleown Fixtures
• Download ==> Douglas Fixtures
• Download ==> Finch Hill Fixtures
• Download ==> Marown Fixtures
• Download ==> Nobles Fixtures
• Download ==> North Ramsey Fixtures
• Download ==> Onchan Fixtures
• Download ==> Peel Sunset Fixtures
• Download ==> Port Erin Fixtures
• Download ==> Port St Mary Fixtures
• Download ==> South Ramsey Fixtures

South Ramsey A have done it! They have won their first ever Ellan Vannin Fuels League Division One title.

It is nothing more than they deserve after a season which they dominated for the most part, although they didn’t sign off their campaign the way they would have hoped narrowly going down 6-4 away at Port St Mary A.

Port’s impressive victory was enough to ensure they secured fourth spot and hold off a fast finishing Douglas A side who turned on the style down the road as they beat Port Erin A 9-1 to finish two points adrift in fifth.

Four points for South away from home were enough to clinch victory finishing six points ahead of Marown A who ended their challenge with an 8-2 win over Douglas B to take second place.

It is hard to explain to people from outside the local bowling fraternity how impressive this win is as the sport has been so ruthlessly dominated by Onchan A and Marown A in recent memory and for anyone to break this stranglehold is a monumental achievement.

The last time neither of the old firm won the title was in 1996 when Casteltown A took top spot, and for the past fourteen years Onchan and Marown have occupied both first and second places.

South have been simply superb this season and they add this league title to the Rayner shield that they won a few weeks ago. Club stalwart John Kennish finished the season unbeaten to take the Division One Merit ensuring his side completed a clean sweep of all the major honours. Congratulations to both John and South Ramsey on the clubs finest ever season, and with the players in their ranks it would be hard to be against them doing the same next term.

Although Onchan A had to relinquish their title they finished the season in fine form beating South Ramsey B 10-0. They have been magnificent champions and will be remembered as such and if they can start their next title challenge the way they ended this one they things could be very different.

North Ramsey A defeated Nobles A 7-3 to finish in sixth spot and relegate their opponents along with Finch Hill A who had no game this week.

Ballaugh A completed an Houdini like escape as they picked up a surprise 7-3 victory over Castletown A to finish just one point above the relegation zone and ensure they kept their seat at the top table for 2017.

Overall this has been a memorable season with some brilliant bowls played, some unbelievable shock results but I have to say in the end the best team won and South Ramsey A deserve all the accolades and plaudits afforded them.

I think next year could be an even more thrilling season and I approach the winter break with bated breath in anticipation of what the 2017 season could have in store for us.

I would like to end by thanking Ellan Vannin Fuels for their sponsorship of the leagues and for forming a partnership that is helping the bowls association develop the sport on the Island.

Castletown won the Ismay Cup for a fifth time beating seven times winners Peel Sunset A 6-3 in a closely fought contest.

South Ramsey A successfully defended their Rayner Shield title with a 5-3 win over Douglas A at Castletown.

South Ramsey were always favourites to win but the draw gave the team from the Villa Marina an outside chance of causing an upset.

Douglas had to win big in the first half and realistically needed to win three of the first four games to stand a chance of overall victory.

South started strongest and at one stage it looked as if they may win all four games on the green however Douglas dug deep and the tide swung with Douglas looking like they may register their own clean sweep.

Bob Clark picked up the first win for Douglas beating David Bradford 21-17 after a really high quality entertaining match. South captain Alan Moore levelled things for his side with a superb 21-17 win over Island Captain Dave Barney Kelly. Paul Kelly put Douglas back in front as he defeated Chas Grills 21-14. Things ended all level after four games thanks to a magnificent performance from Gary Conwell who turned back the clock to put in a performance of old as he saw off the challenge of Ian Moore 21-17.

As expected South were too strong for Douglas in the second half and it wasn’t long before they had two more wins in the bag with Glynn Hargraves and John Kennish turning on the style to pick up 21-5 wins over Mark Kneen and Stuart Garret respectively. Despite battling hard Stevie Kelly was unable to hold off Peter Collister who sealed the win for his side with a 21-15 win. Keith Rise battled hard though and restored some pride for his side fighting back to beat Dave Dido Kelly 21-19.

South Ramsey well deserved their win and if they continue to put in performances like this they will almost certainly win their first ever division one title this year.