After three rounds the Wimmera Bowls Weekend Pennant has thrown up a few surprises, with no undefeated teams and five sides sitting on two wins.
Last week the newly promoted Horsham City 2 knocked off last year's runner up Sunnyside 1, and on Saturday they caused an even bigger upset and defeated their sibling side City 1.
And if you are looking for why it has happened there is one big reason, the rink of the diminutive Hux Mitchell. In the class of 20/21 Hux is the Dux!
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It's more than one person, with 'Wazza' Lang whistling them in as lead, Betty Cozens solid as second and Michael Tucker on track at third there is plenty of support, but the reports are that Mitchell is playing a major role as Skipper.
Over three rounds the Mitchell rink has an average winning margin of over 17 shots per match. On Saturday they won by 21 shots over Ron Goudie's rink. Even though City 1 got the other two rinks, they went down by 8 shots.
Up at Dimboola the reigning premiers, Nhill , lost their first match in around a year when they went down to Dimboola 1, as they did last year.
After two big wins, with just one change to last years premiership lineup, Nhill had four changes to their side for the match against their southern neighbours.
It was a day of lopsided results. One rink skipped by Alan King to Nhill by 24 shots, but Dimboola took the other two by 22 and 25 with the bigger margin on the rink of Shannon Williams, Judith Albrecht, Greg Cook and Rob Pyers Skipping over Kevin 'Fox' Jones' rink.
Horsham Golf 1 got back on the winners' list after a big loss to Nhill. They got up by 14 shots over Coughlin Park 1, thanks to their sole winning rink getting up by 25 shots. Trevor Wood, Kevin Walsh, Danny Schmidt and Skipper Graeme O'Connor were the big winners.
Sunnyside 1 took all three rinks in their 102-48 shot win over Kaniva 1. Chris Trotters rink was the largest margin with 29 shot win over the team led by Jeff Meyer.
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In Division 1 Weekend Matches this weekend has some really defining matches. Horsham City 2 travel up to Kaniva, Horsham City 1 host Horsham Golf 1, Dimboola will welcome Coughlin Park 1, and in a rematch of last years Grand Final Nhill 1 will host Sunnyside 1.
In Weekend Division 2, Nhill 2 are the only undefeated side. Five sides have two wins, but Nhill look to have a great depth of bowlers and will take some stopping. Nhill defeated Goroke by 25 shots, but with three substitutes named in the Goroke side it appears some Edenhope bowlers might be taking the chance to help their neighbours out.
The close match was out at Natimuk. Horsham Golf got up by just one shot, 65-64. They took 2 rinks, but wonderful to see Allen Webb in the Nati side at the age of 99!
Horsham City 3 got up by 10 shots over Dimboola 2. The largest margin went to the rink of Jack Shearwood, Greg Dixon, Gerald Murphy and Duncan Bottoms (s) for the City team with an 11 shot win. Coughlin Park 2 drew first blood for the year with a 14 shot win over Sunnyside 2 down on the City carpet.
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The Parkers have played the top three sides in their first three games, and with a quirk of the draw will start playing those same three sides again in a few weeks. With Wally Dumesny in full control on his rink, (with a fair bit of help from Grenville Short, Tim Nihill and Lucky McKinnon) Coughlin Park got that rink by 13 shots and averaged the other two rinks out.
In the other match Sunnyside 3 defeated Coughlin Park 3 by 27 shots, mostly due to the 25 shot win of the rink of Hedi Holtkamp, Jim Hadden, Terry Miller and John Brown.
In the third Division there were a couple of tight matches, Horsham City 4 had a good battle with Sunnyside 4 but got up by 2 shots across on the Baillie st synthetic. Sunnyside's Kevin Schultz skipped his rink to a 10 shot win, but the Ian Fisher and John Lehmann rinks made up the margin with 4 and 8 shot wins.
Kaniva 2 and Nhill 3 were separated by just 5 shots, with the southerners coming out winners despite winning just one rink. Nhill's Ian Cramer, Maurice Haby, 'Bruiser' Beacom and 'Boof Dunford had a 10 shot win and that made up for the two Kaniva rinks skipped by Dean Shurdington and Bruce Meyer who took 1 and 4 shot wins.
In the final match Nhill 4 beat Coughlin Park 4 by 31 shots.
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