Pennant bowls is back
Around the Greens with the Rinkside Spy
We are finally back with another bowls season and we’re hoping this year will be our best yet. There was a 216 day break between the men’s finals last year and Saturday’s season opener and on Tuesday the women ended a 230 day pennant-less spell. We have a new rule in place for pennants this year which allows each club to have only one team in each of the Premier League divisions. Two men’s clubs and an amazing six women’s teams are made ineligible for promotion by this rule. This will have a big say in what happens at the end of the year in the women’s competition in particular, with the possibility there will be no eligible sides to get promoted in the top half. These sides are however still able to win the pennant.
Many sides will be competing in a new division this year after securing promotion or falling victim to demotion. It’s not been a great start overall for these sides with only 45% of sides winning their first game with one draw. The group that has fared the best at this very early stage are sides that have been demoted in women’s pennants. These sides have a 57% win rate in the first round and are the only group in a new division with a positive record. We would perhaps expect the demoted sides to go better than promoted ones but that is not the case in men’s pennants so far. Promoted sides had 5% more wins than those coming from higher divisions with one promoted side beating a demoted one directly in 3rd division. Relegated sides do however have the edge in head to head matchup, winning two of the three matches played against sides coming up. Of course the sample size is too small to give us anything to predict with but the numbers are interesting nonetheless.
There were a couple of sides who have started the year off with a bang and will be hoping that it is a sign of things to come. One of these was Bedford’s Men’s 2nd Division Blue side who won by a monstrous 94 shots to begin their campaign following last year’s relegation. They were joined by Scarborough’s 5th Gold and Warwick’s 3rd Gold who won by 85 and 79 respectively. The Warwick side included the rink of Lindsay Hill, Tony Drewett, Brian Raynor and Hugh Robartson who not only had the biggest rink win of the week, 45 shots, but also collected the first 50 badge of the year scoring 55 shots against Yanchep. The biggest rink win in women’s pennants also came from Warwick. The rink skippered by Betty Bruechert won by 31 shots as part of their sides 54 shot win in 3rd Division Blue against Quinns. There was only one aggregate victory that was bigger which was Pickering Brook’s 66 shot win over Rossmoyne in 3rd White. They had two 27 shots rink wins in that victory and were the only women’s side to break a century of shots scored.
In a case of close but no cigar the previously mention Scarborough 5th division just missed a badge on two
fronts. The Scarborough’s 5th division Gold team of Peter Judd, Tony Redden, Steve Barrow and Greg Power managed to beat an Innaloo team 47-3. They were not just close to the 50 badge, but were also a measure away from an 8 badge on one end, with one bowl just missing out on the count. Good wins on the other rinks in the side too with Tony Snelling’s side 34-8 and John Higgs 30-15 for an aggregate of 111-26.
If you have any records, fantastic performances or good stories that other people would like to read about please send them through to enquires@bowlswa.com.au. Who knows? We might see your name or your club in our article next week.
The Rinkside Spy
