Lakers are new leaders

There is a new team at the top of the Manx Petroleum sponsored Outdoor Winter Bowls League after the latest two days of action and with a change of fourth and fifth positions, it is definitely game on for the title come next March.

Most of the teams competing have players in their ranks that can cause an upset on their day and this was certainly the case on Saturday and resulted in the first loss of the season for early leaders Outsiders.

All went to plan for the top two in their opening encounters, Outsiders dropped only four chalks whilst defeating Castletown Cannons and second placed Mooragh Lakers just eight in a victory over Parkers.

Lakers carried on their good form and just missed out on a full house in their clash with the Cannons; whereas Outsiders slipped to their first defeat at the hands of Parkers who recorded some great individual results to take a memorable victory.

This all left Mooragh Lakers top on an average of 120.2, whilst Outsiders slipped to 119.1, the same as third placed A-Team, who had the weekend off.

Results for Saturday, November 17: Outsiders 122 (5), Castletown Cannons 95 (1); Mooragh Lakers 118 (4), Parkers 98 (2); Parkers 108 (3), Outsiders 104 (3); Castletown Cannons 99 (1), Mooragh Lakers 124 (5).

The second day’s outcomes were pretty much as expected; however the margins in two of the results were perhaps not.

Just three places separated the sides in the opener, when fifth placed Seven-Up were ruthless in a 126 to 69 points defeat of Erin Porters – their first maximum to date.

Having lost both fixtures last time out, Louie’s Angels needed a win to get their challenge back on track and they were pushed all the way by Castletown Corkers, who have yet to record a victory.

Porters then recovered from their earlier set back to notch up a four games to two success over Corkers, who couldn’t quite hit the 100 points mark, but did improve their overall average.

Seven-Up had lost the previous three clashes with teams above them in the table, but this time they clearly had other ideas and beat rivals Louie’s Angels by a comfortable margin of 30 chalks and swap positions with them in the standings.

Results for Sunday, November 18: Erin Porters 69 (0), Seven-Up 126 (6); Louie’s Angels 117 (4), Castletown Corkers 105 (2); Castletown Corkers 95 (2), Erin Porters 108 (4); Seven-Up 120 (4), Louie’s Angels 90 (2).

Once again one of the groups taking part in the midweek round robin had to be settled by a roll-up and taking the honours were Peter Kelly, Derek Allen and Sue Gawne.

Just missing out were the trio of Bernard Galka, Ray Watterson and Pauline Whorral.

There were clear winners in the yellow jack gang with the victors being Jean Thackrah, Kevin Firth and Janet Monk, with second going to Maureen Hamilton, Steph Swift and Caroline Corlett.

Entries are now being taken for the J&M Lee doubles, this is a new competition introduced in memory of the Club’s former president, Jack Lee, who passed away earlier this year. Sadly his wife Margy died a short while afterwards.

The competition, which will be held on Saturday 22 December, will be run as a drawn doubles, with the format yet to be decided. In the meantime raffle tickets are on sale and prizes would be much appreciated. All proceeds will go to the RNLI.