The other Sunday saw the traditional closing game (Captain’s Day) when a team representing the Captain plays against a team representing the President.

This year, it was decided to play a slightly different format. As usual, it was played with four players forming a rink for each team and several rinks constituting the match but, on this occasion, each rink moved to play against a different rink of opponents after every four ends and each member of the rink played a different role so that, by the time the game finished, every member of the rink had played as lead, second, third and skip. This even applied to the rink consisting of our Chairman, our Club Secretary and two of their grandchildren, aged seven and nine. I am not sure of the final result (or if anyone is) but the important thing is that everyone had a good time.

On the Thursday evening, the Men’s team played in the last game of the Charity Cup Competition under the floodlights at Purnells against Norwest. Before the game, both teams still had the possibility of reaching the final (to be played at Norwest on the Friday night) but Prattens lost on four of the five rinks (some narrowly and some less so) and Norwest moved on to the final where they lost to the team representing the two Frome clubs (Park and Selwood). In this topsy-turvy competition, this was one of the teams that Prattens had previously beaten.

As previously reported, three of our Ladies (Chris Love, Pauline Dando and Margaret Harvey), reached the final of the Somerset Benevolent Triples which was played last Sunday morning at Ashcombe in Weston-super-Mare. The game was played against a triple consisting of Jenny Whitlock and Barbara Colby, from Yeovil and Mary Sutton, from Somerton.

The early ends were very close, with both teams playing well, but then the Prattens Ladies leapt into the lead with an end where they obtained four shots and continued to gradually move further ahead and the game finished with the score sixteen shots to eight. Congratulations to Pauline, Margaret and Chris, who will be presented with their trophies at the Somerset Bowls lunch in November.

We also now have the final placing for the Ladies in the Wild League, where they finished third, having initially been reported as finishing fifth. The mix-up in placings was due to one of the teams withdrawing part way through the season and the league officials making mistakes when recalculating the points gained.

Graeme Smith