Bowls: Premier promotion for Balbardie

Feb 4 2010 Stewart Meikle, West Lothian Courier

BALBARDIE Indoor Bowling Club had promotion to Premier League status firmly in their grip but sadly the Bathgate based team let the major prize slip threw their fingers with an agonising eight shot away defeat from, at the time, second from bottom Alloa.

No detail on the 83-75 defeat has come to hand other than the talk of bowling circles in the area is the damaging loss of eight shots at one end on the rink skipped by Ewan Shearer.

Shearer has enjoyed many highs in his productive bowling career but this wasn’t one of them and he will be keen to put it behind him and move swiftly on to the next challenge for Balbardie, and that comes in the Scottish Cup.

Bainfield were the benefactors of the Balbardie setback with the Edinburgh club scoring a 92-65 home win over Stirling putting them level at the top on points but with 48 more shots in the bank.

West Lothian IBC also suffered the agony of finishing runners up in the A section of the Premier League but they were chasing leaders Lanarkshire and did wonderfully well to finish with a 39 shot away win over Auchinleck.

The result would have been good enough to have captured the qualifying honours and a place in the Premier League final had Lanarkshire lost, however the celebrations were frustrated in painful circumstances with the leaders snatch a point at Prestwick.

“The information we received was that Prestwick held a double-figure lead entering the climax ends of their game and as they were defending an undefeated record it looked good for us.

“Then we were told that Lanarkshire had staged a strong finish and managed to secure the point they needed by snatching a 67-67 peel,” said a spokesman from West Lothian.

West Lothian completed their 10-match programme with eight wins and two defeats having lost to Prestwick and at home to Lanarkshire.

Their final encounter at Auchinleck produced a maximum team effort with wins on all four rinks, skipped by Neil Speirs, George Sneddon, Thomas Mann, and Mark Allison.

Speirs was a flying machine as he hit the heights to skip Cameron Greer James Greenock and James Speirs to a spectacular 37-9 win.

The highlights came thick and fast and included a run of 4, 1, 2, 1 3 to cross 15-6 then a purple patch spell of 1, 2, 2, 7 to lead 27-7 before icing the cake with a 3, 5, 2 finish.

Sneddon still had it all to do at 11-11 after 15-ends but he stepped up the pace with a run of 1, 3, 1, 1, 2 and skipped David Wilson Joey Strickland and Stuart Johnston to a 19-12 win over W McKenzie.

Mann skipped Paul Lynas Des Haggart and Raymond Logan into a 9-1 lead but came under pressure at 12-13 before hitting back with a hat trick run of 2’s to go on and win 19-16 against G Johnston.

Allison was nip and tuck all of the way against D Watson but tipped the scales with a 2, 1, 1 finish to skip Bryan Cooper Richard Mark and Calum Logan to a 19-18 win.

Blantyre ended the four-in-a-row title run of defending champions East Lothian by capturing the qualifying honours in the B section of the Premier League, finishing one point ahead of the ‘Garden County’ team.

INTEREST in the bowls sector of the 2010 Commonwealth Games to be held in Delhi in October has been raised by the announcement last week of a 12 person team to represent Scotland in a major International Test Series.

Delhi is to host the 8-nation event from April 6 to 10 with the Country’s involved expected to include England, Northern Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Africa, and India.

Scotland’s bowls hierarchy plan to nominate their final selections to the Commonwealth Games Council in late June for ratification and rightly or wrongly the bowls community believes the test line up shows which way the wind is blowing.

Which is exciting news for the Lothian’s area as the men’s line up includes David Peacock of Midlothian and Neil Speirs of West Lothian plus former East Lothian star Wayne Hogg who now plays under the banner of Fife.

Midlothian is also rejoicing at the selection of Agnes Melrose, and Lauren Baillie of East Lothian joins her in the ladies six strong team.

The selection does bring disappointment of major proportions though to our own Lorraine Malloy who hasn’t made the Test side despite having an incredibly strong form line to her CV.

Peacock is named in the middle of Hogg and re-instated Aussie David Gourlay in the men’s Triple while Speirs plays lead to Darren Burnett of Angus in the Pairs. Paul Foster of Ayrshire plays the spearhead role in the Singles.

Melrose will skip the ladies Triple with Lynn Stein at lead and Baillie in the middle while the line up is completed by Claire Johnston in the Singles and Caroline Brown and Margaret Letham in the Pairs.

The statement released by the Scottish Bowling Association and the Scottish Women’s Bowling Association states: “The team represents an exciting blend of highly talented athletes pressing for selection for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October.

“The team was selected following a rigorous selection process of observing performances and achievements on both indoor and outdoor surfaces, warm weather training in Golf Del Sur, Tenerife, in October 2009, and a test series versus Northern Ireland in December 2009.”

The gent’s total haul of medals in previous Commonwealth Games is, nine gold, five silver and seven bronze.

THE Scottish Cup action this weekend pitches West Lothian against Forfar at Headwell on Saturday and Balbardie against West of Scotland at Lanarkshire IBC.