With all of the outdoor Men’s County, Mixed and Men’s Mid-Somerset League and Ladies Wild league games completed, focus now moves to the Men’s Charity Cup end of season games and the Finals of our Club Competitions.

To play in the evenings at this stage of the season, you need floodlights, so all of the Charity Cup games are played at either Norwest or at Purnell. The clubs who take part are Prattens, Paulton Purnell, Norwest and a combined Frome Park with Frome Selwood team.

Prattens’ first match was at Norwest, against what proved to be a strong Paulton team.

The match was played across five rinks, Prattens lost on all of them and Paulton collected all ten points. The next match that Prattens played was at Purnell and was against the combined Frome teams, but, on this occasion, Prattens prevailed and won on three rinks, while losing on only one rink with the other rink drawn, giving Prattens seven of the ten points.

The next game was against Purnell and was played as five rinks of triples and again, Prattens won on three, drew on one and lost on one and therefore, gained seven of the ten points available. This now gives us a total of fourteen points out of thirty so far (we are really starting to regret our failure to pick up any points against Paulton).

Our final game in the league portion of this competition will be played at Purnell and will be against Norwest this Thursday evening. The top two teams will then play-off in a final at Purnell on Friday.

The previous weekend saw the finals of all of the club internal competitions. The first final played was the final of the Keith Harrington Trophy, which is a mixed competition, but featured two ladies in the final. This proved to be a very close game, with Pauline Dando coming back from being behind, following the only shower of rain of the weekend, to beat Chris Love by 22 shots to twenty. On the Saturday afternoon, there were three finals played. These were the Thomas Cup where Colin Love decisively beat Caryl Doel, 22–10, the Mixed Pairs competition, where Bernie Pearce and Mickey Gilbert beat Margaret Harvey and Pauline Dando by a margin of 23–20 and the Handicap, where Jill Hanks beat Richard Brimble by 22–10 in a match where the handicap system would have required Richard to get 26 shots to win. On Sunday morning, the three competitions played were the 101 and the Ladies and Men’s Two Wood games.

In the 101, Pauline Dando played Chris Waldron and built up a substantial lead. Then Chris took the jack and attempted to change the game by taking the mat right up and placing the jack near to the ditch. This tactic enabled Chris to pull back into the game, but just as the game was becoming close, Chris made a mistake by putting the jack into the ditch and Pauline immediately took the mat back and set a much longer jack. From this point on, there was only one winner and Pauline duly triumphed by 105 to 77. Meanwhile, the Two Wood competitions were taking part, with Mr and Mrs Harvey taking part in their finals against Graham Whittock and Chris Love. In the Ladies Final, Chris Love was slightly ahead, but Margaret Harvey came back and won with one end to spare.

In the Men’s Final, Graham Whittock built up a good lead, but then Roy Harvey also came back and tied the game at 13–13 with the last end to play. Roy was then lying game until, with the final wood of the match, Graham drew in to narrowly claim the shot and the match 14–13. It was a game to grace any bowls final.

In the final session of the weekend, the three finals played were the Men’s and Ladies Singles (Four Wood) and the final of the Triples Competition. In the Men’s Singles, Richard Brimble decisively defeated Bernie Pearce by 21–10 shots. The Ladies Singles once again saw Pauline Dando and Chris Love facing one another with Pauline winning by 21 shots to sixteen. This result meant that Pauline Dando had won three competitions, while Chris Love was runner-up in all three of the Singles.

In the Triples competition, Barrie Dando, Robert Pemberton and Sue Fear won against Malcolm Moon, Mickey Gilbert and Lin Brimble. Congratulations to all of the winners and commiserations to all of the runners-up.

This week, the Ladies team played a friendly match across three rinks away to Wedmore and won by an aggregate score of 70–50. The Ladies are still waiting for some of the Final matches to be played in the Wild League, so are presently unsure of their final position, but will be amazed if they retain the title that they won last year.

Three of our Ladies (Chris Love, Pauline Dando and Margaret Harvey) went to Wells at the weekend to play in the semi-final of the Somerset Benevolent Triples, which they had qualified for a few weeks ago, against three ladies from Yeovil.

Prattens gained two extra shots on the extra end and ran out winners by a score of 12–10 and move on to the final, which will be played next Sunday morning at Ashcombe in Weston-super-Mare. At the time of writing, we do not know who their opponents will be.

Graeme Smith