FOR FOX SAKE, WINTER LEAGUE JUST DOESN'T APPEAL

Turneth October and the Winter bowling league at Fox Lane began. Doubts about whether it's going to be a good idea this time around stretch back towards the tail end of last Winter. Yet when the time came around again, I nevertheless paid my subscription and turned up for duty giving benefit to all those doubts.
I played poorly in the first match, paired up with our skipper Steve Marginson on the back green. We got whooped and I know damn well it was mainly my fault. I struggled for length and found it a mostly unenjoyable experience which tipped my delicate commitment to playing Winter doubles over the edge.
The following week I told Steve I'd prefer to take a back seat or drop out completely if he wished to replace me. He might have thought it a knee-jerk reaction to having played shite and was probably surprised - also confused by my lack of one outstanding reason alone to knock it on the head. But there are many reasons as I tried to explain and yes, playing shite last week was one of them and on that form I'm simply no good for the team anyway.
That game did reiterate my unfavourable relationship with the greens at Fox Lane though and a lack of love to play on them. As I have touched on before, visually they are luscious grassy spaces well tendered, but from my bowling perspective, a stiff surface to plough my woods through with any sort of confidence in what I am doing. I've persevered here a few years but these greens require a skill I don't possess. Perhaps I could persevere some more, but at the expense of feeling I have better things I can be doing on dark Wednesday nights in Winter, it would seem a pointless exercise just now.
Further niggling contributions to my feelings of Winter bowls woe would be that our squad is a little too big to keep everyone (or me, at least) happy. Seven players who are all keen to play every week to fill just four spaces requires a lot of rotation and so some momentum and a good run in the team unlikely.
I thought we were good enough to stay up in the top division last season and I really wanted us to turn our awful start around. But Steve had seemed content for us to accept the fate of relegation and set sights on resetting for promotion and an appearance at finals day this time around. For those reasons already stated though, I couldn't see that being so clear-cut whatsoever. I felt too many changes each week may have contributed to our downfall last Winter. You look around at successful teams in this league and it's usually five - six at the most - regulars and often the same pairs clicking each week. These guys have one or two signed up on the end of the phone should they be short. That sort of set up seems to get the best out of a team.
Now I'm the spare on the end of the phone, I really hope the remaining six start to put results together and believe Steve and his team have every chance now because more opportunities to play will occur from my absence.
In addition to my now lengthening list of Winter season whines and whinges, too often for me our team don't know if they are selected until it's literally time to go on the green. It can be one of Steve's traits as a captain - maybe deciding who to disappoint lies as heavy as who to select to get a result - whatever the reasoning behind it, the lack of preconceived clarity on team selection induces some of the same helpless feelings I had as a junior footballer when the manager would name his team literally just before we got our kit on. It's that cliffhanging pre-match tension of hope, sometimes disintegrated by the disappointment of being made substitute or sometimes rewarded with overwhelming relief at being picked... but this isn't the Central Lancs Junior League Under 13's... I'm fifty-frigging-two next month. I just like to know one way or another in advance and I think that's fair enough.
This might seem a bit critical which isn't the intention here, it is what it is and of course all this is easy for me to say because I'm not a team captain in any capacity and don't profess to have the ability to be one.
All reasons considered and even more that I don't care to bore myself further by converting in to written words - having made the choice to drop from the team I have since felt comfortable about it and convinced I've done the right thing.
Keen as mustard crown green bowler I may be much of the time, however the realisation here is that bowling really hasn't become my number one extracurricular activity at this time of year and serves as an opportunity to take a much needed break from my commitment to it.

SEASON REVIEW

Five years down the line now in this crown green bowling adventure and the trajectory of improvement continues it's steady course upwards.
Playing in one of the top divisions of local league this season has had it's challenges and particularly away from home, but that Thursday evening environment has brought me on no end. Our Eagle Blues team is competitive with a good spirit and from an individual point of view, tens wins from twenty matches in the Leyland & District League is a sound starting point from which to believe I can keep getting better. My record in the Chorley League was also my best so far.
The season started for me by beating Accrington bowler Simon Pearson quite convincingly at Longridge Spring Singles and then ended losing to... Accrington bowler Simon Pearson quite convincingly at Longridge Autumn Singles. A lot of stuff happened in between, but the Simon factor requires more attention than just the sheer coincidence.
There's not a lot between us as bowlers I don't think, but there was a steady and steely belief about Simon in our second meeting and his form late season was testimony to that. You can look up to the top bowlers, admire and try to replicate them. There's no harm in gazing too far up the ladder, but the next rung is what really matters and there was something about playing Simon that made me realise how I need to equip myself in the future and how close I might be to even better results if I can just keep more of a level head and grab on to some consistency.
I still get excited, probably too excited. Every game is an intense experience and I enjoy that side of it, I've always been that sort of sporting competitor and for me, that drives improvement. But as I have been told by teammates past and present, I need to stop beating myself up and getting in to a dark place when I make mistakes or just happen to be having one of those days when it's just not happening.
This still remains a big challenge and ultimately will still define when, or if, my game develops further or reaches a plateau.
This season had it's disappointing moments, but generally it has been one firm step in the right direction and having beaten or given some good games to quite a few players of repute. But it's an 8-21 defeat at Brownedge towards the end of May that I'll probably most fondly remember the 2025 season for.
Playing the ultimate legend of the game Brian Duncan was as much an honour and a privilege as it was an unlikely twist of fate. Too much of an honour perhaps as I played the weight of the game's greatest rather than concentrating enough on the actual match. I can't beat myself up for not being able to put the blinkers on the enormity of my opponent that evening though. If I hadn't have been so nervous and oozed so much respect, then one might question just what the hell I'm doing playing the game in the first place.

PEAKED IN THE FIRST ROUND

Tuesday 30th September 2025
LONGRIDGE AUTUMN FLOODLIT SINGLES
At Longridge Cons

After reaching the third round here last Autumn and Spring, despite a lack of proper practice and any singles matches for a few weeks, I arrived at Berry Lane carrying a feeling of quiet confidence. This in itself is a yardstick of continued improvement.
Practice went well, I picked the pace of the green up and was looking forward to getting stuck in. It's a state of mind. If I love the green rather than fear it, I can be a pain in the arse for many bowlers on my day. But, as I mused over my night's play with my favourite competition organiser John Hanson before leaving, we agreed that consistency is the next barrier to overcome.

FIRST ROUND QUALIFIER
v TREVOR BIBBY (Preston) W 21-10

Wondering who I'm up against after returning from the loo, I reach for my bag and hear from Trevor, "It's me and you John". "Oh right", says I cool and collected. But I was actually thinking, "Oooh, spicy!"
No love lost from me when he departed from the Eagle & Child's books last year, Trevor has popped up a few times in my bowling diaries for his sometimes churlish demeanour on the green which I have found myself previously taking offence to. But now he's not around anymore, I'm over it and when going out of his way to slip me a compliment about my President's Day organisational efforts a month or so ago, it revealed the much more gracious side to him that I know exists, but which is kept mostly guarded behind the game face of archetypical man's man.
Amongst the first four matches on, promising practice blended in to matchplay very smoothly. My lead bowls were solid, Trevor was having to put really good ones up to get anything and I started to make a gap on the scorecard.
There were probably three bowls in particular amongst a strong performance that I remember being key to sustaining the pressure. One was after stupidly conceding the block by sending it off, yet still leading out Trevor's replacement mark with a toucher. On a very similar mark I also tapped Trevor's toucher out for one of my own. Then later in the game, one from Trevor's own school of striking, picking the jack out to kill the end when my opponent held two close ones and might have been thinking about a comeback.
Trevor likes to stretch the perimeters of the rulebook. Walking all over the land a few times and sending his lead bowl with the jack still well and truly travelling, but I wasn't for rising to it and particularly when the game seemed to be going my way and so a wry smile sufficed. Besides, not waiting for the jack to stop didn't work out so well for him on most occasions.
I probably played as well as I have in any game this season and my historic little grievances with this fella aside, I've always respected Trevor's bowling ability and not for one fleeting second thought I'd won this match until I reached twenty-one. After smothering the target with two good ones at all-but, Trevor's strike sent woods everywhere but I was still on and that was it. Another notable scalp taken just before my season draws to it's official close.

SECOND ROUND QUALIFIER
v SIMON PEARSON  (Accrington) L 11-21 (off 3-3)

Unfortunately I peaked in that first round encounter when only a similar standard of play was going to test Simon Pearson. I played Simon in the Longridge Spring competition earlier this year and had the upper hand on that occasion, but I knew lately that he had been playing much better. Reaching finals night at Sabden, losing to the eventual winner Eamonn Hernan to seventeen and having got past home bowler John Coupe prior to our second round engagement here.
From the off I just wasn't sending bowls with the same intensity as that last match and it became expensive because Simon was starting to rack twos up and build a significant lead.
I did rally though, managing to lead out well enough to win five or six ends on the spin, but frustratingly unable to match up my second bowl and so they were all singles. Then my head went down a bit as I conceded another couple of twos that had undone all that hard work and my efforts at a comeback had the life squeezed out of it.
Simon was playing some tricky round peg marks very well indeed and I was under the cosh. A couple of strikes were unlucky not to disrupt things, one that found a gap so tight it was the talk of spectators behind it. But nothing I could muster was good enough on the night against Simon.
At 11-18 I thought maybe there could still be a chance to turn the tide as he sent the jack out to the very edge of the green. But Simon still led out with a toucher, then chuffed to have at least put up a close one to surely save, he bloody well put another up. I cobbled my effort at striking and then next end Simon sent two more glorious round peggers in to the sloping corner and once again couldn't quite muscle in on them when playing through.
Disappointment, mainly that I didn't play well enough to push my opponent further. As my previous opponent Trevor rightly commented as I packed my woods away, I never really got started.
To have played so well in the first round and then be so comparatively lacklustre in the second round is something to be wary of in future instances I suppose. But basically it's down to experience and a lack of consistency that can only come with... more experience... and a more conscious effort to keep working on this element of my game.

RUTHLESS RUTH AND STEVE JUST TOO GOOD

Monday 24th September 2025

TIM ROBINSON AUTUMN DOUBLES 

SEMI-FINAL

With ANN DERBYSHIRE 

v RUTH WATSON & STEVE WILSON L 20-31 (off 3-3)

As the only unbeaten pairing going in the the semi-finals, perhaps the writing was on the wall for form to break. I personally believed however, that Ann and I still had a lot more to give and had every chance of going all the way. 

Unfortunately though on the night, neither of us played to a standard we were satisfied with and in the face of a beautifully balanced partnership of Ruth and Steve, only a very good performance was going to give us a realistic chance. 

We started the game well as usual, then had the mid-match lull as usual and at 15-15 we were still in with a shout if we could find some spark. But Ruth's lead bowls, which had already been pretty good, cranked up another notch and Steve was playing well at the back to add icing to her cake. In contrast, I couldn't find a bit of magic from the front when required and Ann's game-changing last bowl just wasn't there. 

Inside the next seven ends, Ruth and Steve were destructive, scoring fifteen to go all-but. 

We swapped around a few times, but effectively Ann and I were left scratching our heads. On the brink, we finally won an end back and the opportunity to go across the pavilion, which had been our salvation in previous games. Sure enough we started to claw a few back. But mistakingly leading out with one of Steve's bowls instead of my own was a real clanger, then having to go up and replace it and losing my head space cost us a real chance of proceeding to make our opponents sweat. Instead there was just enough of a gap for Ruth to find another pearler and yet Ann's well drawn last bowl would have saved us but for giving up with six inches to go.

Having said all that, we were well beaten by the better team who then went on to win the final two days later and much deserved too.

This is a cracking end of season club competition which nobody is ever sure what it may throw up. I really enjoyed partnering up with Ann, I don't think we were far off where we needed to be but just didn't click in this last four duel. 

Fortunate enough to win it at the first attempt with Barry Wright two years ago, two semi-final defeats have now followed but I'm determined to eventually join those few with their name on the trophy twice. That's just a heads-up for my partner-to-be next year, whoever that is. No pressure!