East Coast of Yorkshire Crown Green Bowling Association ladies shine despite Inter-District defeats

In the opening encounter against the Huddersfield ladies, the East Coast team’s Jennie Allen went down by a 21-11 scoreline to C Ghaffer, writes David Muir.

Then Jo Leeman won by a 21-17 margin against J Haigh but that was the only success for the East Coast ladies with Deb Stallard losing 21-16 to J Kendall, Allison Roe was also beaten 21-16 by K Gant, while Lisa Watson lost out 21-7 to S Brown, and Pam Watson fellow to a 21-12 reverse against L Dury and Sue Green suffering a 21-8 defeat to G Gledhill.

Lynn Gates was unluckily edged out 21-19 by H Brown, while Denise Dobson was beaten 21-1 by S Howorth and Sue Emmerson was on the wrong side of a 21-12 scoreline against A Buckley.

The aggregate score was 206-140.

The match against Castleford went a little better but not enough.

Lisa Watson lost the first game 21-11 to K Turner but then Allison Roe and Jennie Allen gave our ladies some hope with 21-18 and 21-13 wins over J Slater and N Portman respectively.

Sadly that flicker of hope was soon extinguished as Deb Stallard lost 21-16 to N Farry, Jo Leeman 21-15 to A Hagen, Sue Green 21-19 to L Dye, Sue Emmerson 21-20 to K Portman, Lynn Gates 21-11 to L Hopps, Pam Watson 21-10 to J Matthews and Denise Dobson 21-15 to D Bray.

The aggregate was 199-159 in favour of the West Yorkshire team.

The final match against Leeds did bring some success for the East Coast team, albeit too little and too late.

Jo Leeman won 21-11 against M Wilson, Jennie Allen lost 21-12 to C Barraclough, and Deb Stallard lost 21-15 to J Olifant.

Allison Roe had a very close game losing 21-20 to N Savey before Lisa Watson beat L Gaunt 21-13, Lynn Gates beat S Baincardo 21-15 and Pam Watson beat T Howard 21-11. Denise Dobson and Sue Emmerson both lost 21-15 to T Laurie and C Holmes and, while losing 21-18 to R Telford, Jo Gates scored enough points for East Coast to take the match by a 179-176 scoreline.

All credit to our ladies for trying hard against very tough opposition and, above all else for taking part in this competition.

There are Districts who either cannot or will not raise teams to enter this competition.

Also there are some who could raise teams but will not when the competition is held in the East Coast District because of the travel whereas out team has always had to travel to compete.

Also on Sunday, Bridlington Bay hosted an Open Doubles Merit sponsored by Major Carpets.

Unfortunately there were only 18 pairs entered as a number of players were away either playing in the Yorkshire Ladies Inter-District or supporting our team in the competition.

There was a small plus side to this in that, as on Friday in the Terry Summersgill Cup event at Eastfield BC, all games could be played off scratch without a very late finish and with a maximum of only four jacks on the green.

The two preliminary round games were won easily by Andy Adamson (Borough) and Danny Cooper (North Cliff) and Adam Chilvers and Nigel Trotter (both North Cliff).

All the games in the top half of the draw were fairly comfortable wins, one rather surprising result, certainly so far as the score was concerned, being Mo and Tony Chambers (Castleford) beating Gary Thornton (Borough) and Kevin Gates 21-8.

The bottom half followed a similar pattern with just one unexpected score.

This was in the game between the two preliminary round winners with Adamson and Cooper coming out 21-5 winners over Chilvers and Trotter.

In the top half of the quarter-finals Malcolm Gilbert and Ed Haigh (both Huddersfield) beat Dave Moment (North Cliff) and Ronnie Noble (Borough) 21-16 while Steve Dover (Whitby) and Linda Armstrong (Castleford) ended the Chambers’ run 21-12.

In the bottom half Adamson and Cooper had another strong win, 21-10, over Andy Webb (Alverthorpe) and Callum Malone (North Cliff).

The other game was the first really close contest of the day with Paul Morgan (Whitby) and Oliver Burnett (Dukes Park) taking on Josh Emmerson (Whitby) and Stuart Thompson (Pontefract).

This game swung every way with first one pair gaining an advantage and then the other.

Eventually Morgan and Burnett came through 21-20 to set up a semi-final against Adamson and Cooper.

The two semi-finals were both close games with Gilbert and Haigh winning 21-17 against Dover and Armstrong while Adamson and Cooper had a 21-18 win over Morgan and Burnett.

The final started with Adamson and Cooper opening up a 9-3 lead before Gilbert and Haigh pulled back to 9-6 after11 ends.

A four for Adamson and Cooper was answered by a two for Gilbert and Haigh but then Adamson and Cooper scored seven in five ends to stand one score from winning.

Gilbert and Haigh were not done though and came back with six in five ends to trail 20-14 only for Adamson and Cooper to ease over the winning line 21-14.