CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE FOURTH KIND

15/6/22
Eagle Members League Div-1
v HARRY DERBYSHIRE W 21-19

I had a feeling this was going to be a tight game and I wasn't wrong. It needn't have been perhaps. It turned out I'd got a healthy lead together - up to 17 in fact without realising at the time - with Harry quite possibly still in single figures.
But Harry Derbyshire is nothing if not a well seasoned crown green machine. Two nights earlier he reversed a score of 6-19 to win 21-19 on this very green in our league match against Westhoughton.
Just hours before our game he won again in some other afternoon league. Harry is steady, wins a good more than he loses and is a tough nut to crack - or at least that's my assessment of what I've seen over this last year or so.
No surprises then that this game was far from over. A weighty effort of his knocked out the shout of another good two for me and made two for himself, which was a real turning point in the game.
He then took me on a favourite mark of mine, nailed it and got me rattled. His lead bowl was decent, quite often his second too and I just couldn't get in. When it's running quick down there it's not quite the friend I'm familiar with and particularly without the heads-up of rolling the jack first.
I felt I missed a good opportunity to break the rot when I should have had a strike  

at his big target twosome, but got caught in two minds and instead deluded myself in to thinking I could play the perfect bowl. I had struck earlier and knocked out both of his holding bowls in to the ditch, so I should have had a bit more confidence to go with gut instinct.
Eventually I got pissed off and scooped a bowl off my forefoot and clunked it in to the gutter during a changeover. It got a startled look over the shoulder from Harry.  Petulance, yes, but tension released as I got very close on the next end and then finally I broke Harry's monopoly with a good one. Right or wrong, I needed that little outlet of temperamental twitchiness to disperse the onset of full red mist. In sport, there has always been a fine line I tread of letting off a bit of steam or making a complete dick of myself.

At this point I hear the scores at 18-16, breaking Harry's run just in time before he drew level and then possibly beyond. I just couldn't resist going along the same mark again but now with jack in hand, which clearly makes that big difference. I draw two close ones and Harry's pacey second bowl just whizzes by closely but without connection.
Now all-but, I should've continued on the same mark but summat told me not to push my luck so I went higher and straight peg which proved a bad decision. I wasn't fully comfortable actually, so why rush and play it? Perhaps I was still thinking this as my first bowl pinged too far and ran off the green, then my second was miserably short. Harry's first wasn't great but his second was unnecessarily perfect when just a half decent length would have sufficed.
My lead had shrunk to one again on the next end as Harry rolls two very good ones and my adjustment lets me down.
Just when I needed to roll something good though, I take advantage with a close one in front of the jack. Harry sends his second one a little to the left with his first one and I can carry the mat. Job just about done.
Another hard fought win moves me up to the even dizzier heights of third in the table for the time being. This was my fourth victory from five in the Members League so far and was just as close an encounter as the other three, having now recorded bum-squeaky wins of 21-20, 21-19, 21-18 and 21-19 in that order. I have to pinch myself at how things are going so far in these Wednesday night club showdowns.