Kirkliston clinch bowls glory at top tourney

Sep 16 2010 West Lothian Courier

KIRKLISTON carried the West Lothian banner to title glory in the inaugural Inter Counties club Top Five Singles tournament played at Sighthill, defeating Pilrig (Edinburgh and Leith) 3-1 then Hawthorn (Glasgow North West) 3-0.

The Kirkliston Five comprised John Aitken, Steven Forrest, Grant Logan, Greg Logan, and Neil Speirs.

The Top Five format was first introduced to the sport by the then Linlithgowshire Bowling Association back in 1977, as a spin off from the Top Ten introduced in 1975.

A hugely successful National Tournament for County Teams was soon up and running with Kirkliston and Broxburn the joint hosts but the subsequent loss of sponsors Smirnoff to Ice Hockey caused the event to be discontinued.

Scotland’s rich reservoir of talent in the under-25 segment of the sport is held in such high regard that it comes as a major disappointment that the national team failed to land the Home International title in Derry at the weekend.

The opening 131-124 loss to host country Ireland was a major shock, however the Scots did make a strong recovery to beat England 134-111 and Wales 132-106 but ended up playing second fiddle to an Irish team that won all three matches.

The indoor season swung into action at West Lothian IBC last week but the turn-out for the leagues was extremely poor with only two cards handed in from Division 1 of the League Cup.

Ewan Wilson celebrated his chance to skip in the highest division by piloting Burnet Rose, Jim Speirs and Ewan Shearer to a 13-6 win over Stuart Affleck, James Greenock, David Smith and Martin Black.

George Sneddon lined up one man short but skipped Paul Lynas and Des Hagart to an 18-10 return that survived the penalty deduction to win over Calum Black, Frazer Muirhead, Ian Drysdale and Grant Knox.

Frank Weir enjoyed a high-profile outdoor season with Armadale – reaching the national final of the Seniors Fours – and Mr Magnificent has now made a winning transition to the indoor carpet.

The ‘man himself’ lined up at No.3 to Ian Munro Colin Russell and Ronnie Martin in Division Two and made a great start to lead Martin Milne, Mark Crosby and Jack Morton by 10-5.

Morton and Co then caused havoc by carding a super 6 to cross 11-10 and went on to finish 13-12 up but lost the points due to their penalty deduction.

“Losing the six might have caused panic in our ranks and a total collapse but realising I had the voice of experience among my many talents my rink-mates responded to my soothing advice to keep their cool,” reported Mr Magnificent later.

Ian McGill is a man who handles pressure on a day-to-day basis in his job and his way of coping with a 9-2 deficit was to transfer it into victory by skipping Steven Rayer, Bill Bryant and Calum McLean to a 13-9 win over Ron McIntyre Eddie Caulfield and Scott Middlemiss.