Cobram Bowls Club

Round one of Friday Pennant saw Cobram Division 1 away to Tocumwal 2 at Tocumwal, and Cobram Division 2 at home to Tocumwal 3. We’ll never know if it was home ground advantage, but Tocumwal was victorious in Division 1, and Cobram took the points at Cobram. Cobram welcomed a couple of pennant debutantes in Sue Carter and Denise Stanbridge, as well as Tracey Emery playing her first pennant game in Tigers colours.

With grey skies threatening to even further delay the start of Saturday pennant, Cobram Bowling Club was the venue for three home sides eager to commence the season. Division 1 saw the home side pitted against Finley and with the new-look pennant now consisting of three (instead of four) rinks, a rink win was now even more important. Cobram started extremely well, led by newcomer Dane Gade in Steve Tatnall’s rink where all four bowlers managed to play very consistently all day, not giving the opposition anything. Cobram also welcomed John Dixon from Croydon, with his rink also enjoying a runaway win. Greg Dunn found things a little tougher against Archie West with the Finley skip not only saving some big scores against him, but managing to convert heads and get the shot. Finley managed a single shot on the final end to walk away with two rink points despite the Tigers solid overall victory.

Division 4 sees two sides from Cobram entered with a mixed bag of results. The Tigers fourth side suffered a 4-shot loss to Finley, despite the best efforts of fill-in skip Marg Cooper who recorded a fourteen-shot victory.

Chris Ward had a good first game of the year, however Barry Turner’s rink found the going a lot more difficult, going down by 18 shots.

Congratulations to Danny Andersen in this side in playing his first ever game of pennant and to Luke Dunn in the other Division 4 side, who would undoubtedly be Cobram’s youngest ever to grace the green in a pennant match. Luke’s team, while going down on his rink by one shot, managed an overall win thanks to Jimmy Burkitt’s rink who enjoyed a 15-shot win.

With his rink being three shots down before a thunderstorm halted play, his rink managed to pick up 12 shots in four ends when play resumed. It only dropped another three ends for the game in a strong finish.

Divisions 2 and 3 continued the Cobram vs Tocumwal-theme started on Friday with both sides travelling to Tocumwal where play was interrupted by the passing storm front with associated thunder and lightning. This had side managers diving for the conditions of play that can be found in our new fixture books, and umpires looking at their law books to make sure that play was resumed in the correct manner.

Because of the new three rink structure, filtering down from Division 1 it was a new-look Cobram Division 2 that made the trip. Also some players from the 2020 side have moved to other clubs, and there were also some who were unavailable on the day.

Marj McDonald’s rink had a good start against Alan Whitehead, but the latter clawed back to even the score by the middle of the game.

Marj and team peaked at the right time winning five shots on the last two ends to finish one shot up and take rink points. Colin McDonald’s rink had to do battle with Jill Whiteside who was able supported by three more of Tocumwal’s lady bowlers.

It was end 15 before Colin’s team evened the score and then going on to win by two shots for the rink points. On this rink it was a welcome back to pennant for Tel Pearce. On the third rink David Quinane played Graeme Searle’s team and despite an early lead, David’s team was not able to hold off the multiple shot ends from Tocumwal which carried Tocumwal to an overall win.

Cobram’s Division 3 brought home game points after winning two of the three rinks.

Andrew Rushby played Alan Jones and after equalling the scores on the 13th end, they traded shots, but it was Tocumwal’s three shots on the 20th end that was enough for them to take the rink by one shot. Sue Carter followed up her Friday debut with another good Saturday debut game on this rink.

Glenda Mann’s rink took on Noddy Ireland. When Cobram dropped six shots on the ninth end, the scores were definitely in Tocumwal’s favour but perhaps we were lucky that it made their score 13! Cobram then scored six unanswered shots in 5 ends to restore the shot difference to three. And finally scoring eight shots over the final five ends gave Cobram the rink win by two shots. All team members contributed to this comeback.

It was a marathon game on the third rink when Carol Doherty took on Ben Gierveld. With at least five dead ends, they were definitely last into the Club house. Cobram had an 18-shot lead at end 12, and while Tocumwal outscored for the remainder of the game, Carol’s crew held on to win by 10 shots. Michael Stephens played a solid lead role and George Mynard is mastering his new bowlers arm well.

It is great to see bowlers taking advantage of being able to use a bowlers arm to keep them playing our game. In fact, there was one rink in Cobram 4 where all four bowlers were using an arm.

A big thank-you to all those bowlers who filled in this week and congratulations to those playing either their first game for the club, or first game ever.

We send our best wishes to all club members who are dealing with health issues at this time and wish you a speedy recovery.

Some reminders:

• On the noticeboard at the club you will find inserts for your fixture book for the revised draws for Division 3 and Division 4;

• Entry sheet is up for Club Ladies Pairs (close on November 12);

• Entries close on November 15 for State Pairs and Singles;

• Cobram will be hosting club-selected 2-4-2 pairs each Tuesday at 10am. Single entries on the sheet at the Club or call 0407 040 208.