FORM DIP DIVES DEEPER

Monday 7th July 2025
CHORLEY & DISTRICT LEAGUE DIV-2:
Eagle & Child 'A' (137) 8-2 Coppull 'A' (109)
v DEREK LAITHWAITE L 8-21

Oh my goodness me. I thought at the least I couldn't play too much worse than last Thursday. But I think I actually managed it. How do I go from rolling close most of the time without really having to sweat about it, to leaving gaps you could get a car through - and on my home green too - in the space of less than a week?
Derek played an exceptional game here to be fair. I've seen him play a few times and I know full well he wins most of his games and certainly at this level. Even on a good night I would have been hard pressed to beat him. But I was never near to pressing him at all and that's what hurt really. On paper this had the making of a good game, but instead turned out to be the second most comprehensive result of the evening.
If I got the land correct I didn't get the length, if I found a length I missed the land and who am I kidding? More often than not I didn't find either! The visiting Coppullites and indeed one or two of my own contingent might have found humour in my gesticulations and wittering to myself, thinking nothing of airing a good old self-bollocking on a few occasions. But I was suffering out there tonight. It was far from an enjoyable experience and left me in a sort of helpless trance as the game petered out in to it's inevitable outcome. Dumbstruck as to why I was bowling so badly and couldn't even do the basics.
As bad as it got was having just reached the dizzy heights of eight and deciding to roll the jack just over twenty metres on one of the straightest peg marks our green has to offer. This from a serial round-pegger I might add. Simplifying the game for myself, surely I could finally put a good lead up?
As if. Off the land and short, I think I've done everything right to adjust with my second... which inconceivably rolls up against my crappy first one. The fact Derek most unusually let me off with just one on that end was inconsequential as he wrapped two around the jack on the next end to put me out of my misery.
I haven't had a hiding at the Eagle in league bowls like that for quite some time.
Confiding my feelings of bowling helplessness to our own Stevie Wilson, his wise words were to just, "put it in the bin" - "put last Thursday in the bin, put tonight in the bin and if you carry on playing crap, just keep putting in the bin! It's gone. Next game, it will click again eventually."
As Steve also pointed out, of course it happens in other sports and games. In football, strikers have spells when they can't hit a barn door, snooker players miss easy ones. There's often no explanation. It's a mystery of the feeling of confidence, which is not a permanent attribution and can suit itself when it comes and goes.
So grimly absorbed in my own plight, I admit to momentarily forgetting the far bigger and more important statistics of our excellent team result. It was certainly some consolation, with six winners, eight points taken and another victory that takes the heat off our relegation fears.
Although now up to sixth in this division of ten, we head a bottom five that is split by just two points. It's likely going to the wire, but the optimist in me says we should be looking ahead rather than behind and set our sights on trying to catch fifth placed Croston Subs.

I'll be missing next week, maybe that's no bad thing on current form.