Monday 28th July 2025
CHORLEY & DISTRICT LEAGUE DIV-2: Westhoughton 'A' (146) 7-3 Eagle & Child 'A' (145)
v MARK OWENS W 21-19
When form has been sketchy, you turn up at a tricky green you've never seen before, practice goes bloody awful... and then you end up beating probably the toughest draw on the card. This game never ceases to surprise.
Mark Owens is having a very good season in all. Few defeats and hadn't lost a home game in the Chorley league, recently beating a very respectable Bretherton player 21-0.
Despite some intrepidation with all things considered, I recalled a previous encounter with Mark a few years ago at Sabden Autumn Singles. I managed to beat him then, so why not at least be able to give him a game now?
The match started with a good two but succumbed to some good woods from Mark who looked like a bowler used to getting in to his stride here. He led 6-2 but I was doing alright getting second counters in and realised I was playing to a better standard again. I broke my opponent's run with the block and put up good leads to go 7-7. Pre-match practice woes now forgotten, I was getting a good feeling for the green and looking forward to the possibility of a good game ahead. From here I pushed out a small lead which I managed to keep until the closing stages. Something had changed, there was a confidence in what I was doing again and I felt I just had the edge on the night.
At 19-15 and holding one from a close cluster, Mark plays through with an amazing bowl that somehow landed him a two. He then takes me on a mark he shredded me with earlier on but I'd worked it out and sent a perfect second bowl to cancel out his very good lead.
Needing just the one I decide to try a mark we hadn't visited but fluffed it. Too far and wide and then not far enough and tight - an easy two for for the home bowler who now has the jack at 19-20. Mark tries something new too, lengthways just over the middle of Westhoughton's sizeable crown. It's tricky and it's the same result in reverse. His first one shoots through, his second doesn't make it and two bowls hardly of world beating standard are of good enough length to get the win.
We had three winners in all for the team on the night, I scored Matt Hoyles' match against Bryan Booth earlier in the evening. Matt played very well and deserved to win as convincingly as he did, but Bryan was not in the sort of form he showed during one of my most enjoyable home defeats (did I just say that?) when Westhoughton visited the Eagle. Vernon Robinson was our other winner. Despite the 3-7 score it could have been so different. Harry Derbyshire and Steve Marginson both lost by one chalk and we lost the aggregate by a single chalk too. That's a four point swing. We can all blame ourselves for a stray bowl or two that contributed to the fine aggregate loss, but my gamble on the penultimate end still wrankles with me despite being chuffed with my result.
As I set off for home, before turning to head north, the first crescent of a new moon was an impressive sight in the high southern sky and wondered if there could be some lunar influence to my bowls form? I'll be keeping a check on that. The last full moon would have coincided with performances that made we want to howl.
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