Shanklin Bowling Club are celebrating after what has been declared an excellent season for the club’s teams and individual members.
The Men’s Shanklin A side have performed well and remain undefeated in all of this season’s Island-based competitions. The squad of Phil Brooks (Captain), Keith Beckett, Jack Berry, Allen Best, Dave Boulton, Darren Griffith, Steve Hamblin, Robbi Hayes, Ron Leleux, Chris Lloyd, Tony Lloyd, John Marsh, Travis Meller, Martin Tasker-Poland and John Wilkins are the first team to achieve this.
The A side also comfortably won the First Division League Title for the 5th time in the last 6 seasons by winning all their matches. In the KO Cup final, they dominated the game from the early stages and scored a convincing win in the final against Plessey A, succeeding on each of the 3 rinks.
A day later they were involved in a good match against Cowes Medina A in the Colin Ridett Memorial Trophy final. Meller got them off to a good start by winning the singles 21 shots to 9. A 5 scored on the last end saw Hayes and Berry victorious in the Pairs. In the triples, Brooks, Leleux and Lloyd pulled away in the final stages to record a good win. The opponents recorded their only win in the fours against the quartet of Tasker-Poland, Lloyd, Beckett and Marsh, to leave Shanklin A 3 to 1 victors.
Shanklin D will gain promotion to the First Division providing Cowes Medina C do not gain maximum points in their final game of the season and do not do so by a very substantial number of shots.
The Ladies D team have won their league gaining promotion to the Ladies First Division where they join 2 other Shanklin teams.
The club was represented in 5 of the 6 finals of the 6 Men’s Isle of Wight county competitions. All finalists qualified for the National Championships played at Leamington.
In the Men’s National Pairs, Griffith and Berry, having qualified as runners up on the Island, performed excellently to win their first 5 rounds to gain a place in the National Final against a Kent duo. All 4 players performed well but an outstanding performance by the Kent skip gave them the edge and the title.
The quartet of Tasker-Poland, Hamblin, Beckett and Leleux won both the Isle of Wight Fours and the senior fours defeating Bob Mortlock’s Sandown quartet in the former and Martin Butcher’s defending title holders of Plessey in the latter.
In the Singles, Best took the Island championship with a win over Viv Jenkins of Plessey. Griffith took the 2 wood singles with victory over John Pearce of Bembridge. In the fours Leleux’s rink won their first round match against Gloucester but lost in the next game to Suffolk. The other qualifiers all met defeat in their first round matches.
In the Isle of Wight Ladies County Competitions Diane English and Carol Thomas were the runners up in the pairs thereby qualifying for the Ladies National Championships at Leamington. They were involved in a very close first round match against Sussex but went down by 2 shots.
Report and photo by Richard Jeffrey
