Every round of Wimmera Weekend Division 1 Bowls seems to throw up a curve ball, and round eleven was no different.
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Golf 1 went down in Round 10 to look under threat for the finals, but they got up off the canvas to knock off top team City 1, and Dimboola 1, seemingly out of contention a while ago, defeated third team Coughlin Park 1 by 27 shots to be snapping at the Parkers heels.
Who gets the third and fourth spot in the finals could well be decided by who plays who in the last three rounds, but Golf 1 and Dimboola 1 play each other this week, and with Dimmy to play top side City 1 in the last round you would think they will need to defeat Golf this week to have the best chance.
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The Golf win over City is enormous. After Golf's loss to Coughlin Park in the last round, some were starting to talk about Golfs' slide out of finals contention at the end of last season, but this side bats far deeper and showed their best last Saturday.
The rink that has lead the way has been that of Ash Batchelor. Since he has hooked up with Geoff Bald as his third, and Adam Galpin has been in the lead role, the rink has gone seven from seven, and had some decisive wins.
This week Jack Walter played the second position, but the 10-shot win over the highly ranked Kevin Clyne City 1 combo was a big reason for Golf's 63-59 win.
Coughlin Park 1 would have thought the equation was simple: beat Dimboola and they were safe in third, especially at the Sunnyside rinks that they have made their home in 2021 and performed so well at.
But, they are a determined bunch, those citizens from down stream of the horseshoe bend, and they came out and won two rinks by 14 shots each on the rinks skipped by Peter O'Loughlin and Daniel Danisch. The best Coughlin Park could do was win one rink by 1 shot in the 27-shot loss.
Probably the only time Coughlin Park were ahead of the game was the week before when Wally Dumesney turned up at Sunnyside at 12.45 in full uniform thinking Bowls started on the 16th.
Horsham City 2 reversed the result from their first meeting against Kaniva 1 with a 5-shot victory. That is the fifth win for City 2 since their promotion to the top Division which is great result for a number 2 side. It was a one shot win to Kaniva on one rink and a tie on the other rink. It was the old Kaniva man Graham McDonald who skipped the winning rink for City 2 by six shots. The rest of his team was Michael Turner, Betty Cozens who is one of the best performed seconds in Weekend Div 1, and the Duck man Dougie Mitchell.
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Nhill 1 handled the trip down to Sunnyside comfortably, a 20 shot win, but Sunnyside did pick up one rink when Chris Trotter and his four had an eight-shot win against the Fox Jones team. The Division's best performed four of Phil Henselite, Larry Bywaters, Barry Cramer and the mercurial Alan King won by 31-12 to build the platform for Nhill success as they so often do. I saw that big Barry played in a losing rink last Monday in Midweek, but it doesn't often happen on a Saturday.
This week Dimboola 1 welcome Golf 1, City 2 host Nhill 1, Horsham City 1 travel to Kaniva and Sunnyside play Coughlin Park.
Things went pretty much to pre-Christmas form in Division 2. Dimboola 2 is probably the best chance of grabbing a finals berth, and kept their hopes alive with a nine-shot win over Goroke. Coughlin Park 2 welcomed their President back on the green, and Dennis Wade, Tex Giddings, Chris Oliver and Rohan Hawkins won 35-13 to help the Parkers to 5 shot overall win.
A 13 shot win to City 3 over Sunnyside 2, and easy wins to certain finalists Nhill 2 and Golf 2 rounded out the results in Division 2.
Now I'm going to apologise for such brief reports in the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, but I'm in Port Fairy, and there is a fair bit else going on so I'll just tell you that in Division 3 the winners were Golf 3, Nhill 3 and Kaniva 2.
The surf and the Star await.
Twilight Triples triumph
Horsham City Bowling Club held its Twilight "Consortium Private Wealth" 2 Bowl Triples Tournament last week.
Tournament director Duncan Bottoms said that 12 teams playing on a balmy evening under lights was a great success.
Players from Coughlin Park, Horsham Sunnyside, Horsham Golf, and Horsham City played 3 games of 10 ends to decide the winners.
At the end of the evening no team had won 3 games. The winners on points were the team of Doug Mitchell (s), John Williams and Trevor Wood with 75 points.
Runner up was a Horsham City team of Gary Knight (s), Sandra Knight and Michael Turner, with 74 Points.
Lucky 13 for Cozens
It was certainly a busy week for the Horsham City Bowling Club last week.
Last Tuesday saw a hotly-contested Ladies Championship Singles tournament.
The winner was Betty Cozens, who defeated Cheryl McDonald 25 to 13 shots in an excellent game of bowls.
It was Cozens' 13th title at Horsham City.
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