Playing Ditch Weight

The past week has been extremely busy for the Young Bowling Club. The celebrations for the club’s Centenary commenced on Monday morning and ended on Saturday evening.

Four tournaments were played during the week with the Women’s Pairs on Monday being contested by sixteen teams in quite cold conditions. After completing four games of ten ends of 3 Bowl Pairs the winners were Maureen Westbury and Lorraine Bales from Boorowa Ex–Services who won all four games and had a margin of 39 shots.

Second place went to Robyn Corby and Jocilin Hayman from Goulburn and the Cowra team of Marlene Nichols and Sharon Hubber were third.

Playing conditions were much better on Tuesday and continued to improve each day of the week.

Twenty–four teams played in the Open Pairs – an event played over three games of 12 ends of 3 Bowl Pairs.

The local team of John and Kate Cooper were the winners with three wins and a 36 shot margin. Darryl Murphy and Michael Munn from Boorowa Ex–Services came second and Albert Carter and Joe Bargwanna were in third place.

The Men’s Pairs tournament conducted on Wednesday and Thursday consisted of four games of standard pairs over 18 ends.

Jeff Godfrey (Figtree) and Chris Schofield (Dapto) were the winners with 4 wins and a margin of 63 shots. Second place went to Phil Rollinson (Moruya) and John Cooper and Colin Powell and Cliff Traynor were in third place.

Saturday’s Open Triples tournament had a field of twenty teams.

Two games of eighteen ends were played in excellent conditions.

The winning team consisted of Jim White, Jason Jones and John Harriott with a margin of 50 shots. Wally Chater, Geoff DeBritt and Peter Watts came second with a margin of 33 shots and Glen Benson, Mark Mulcahy and Geoff Holt were third with a margin of 22 shots.

One of the very pleasing features of the tournaments was the number of visiting players who made a special effort to be involved in the Centenary events. Players came from Goulburn, Moruya, Kiama, Figtree, Springwood and Wagga as well as clubs in the local area. One team on a holiday trip came from Port Lincoln in South Australia.

The final event for the week was the Centenary Dinner that was attended by more than 100 people. There were a number of special guests associated with lawn bowls. These included the President of Bowls Australia Mr Bob Boorman, the CEO of Bowls Australia Mr Neil Dalrymple, the Immediate Past–President of Bowls NSW Mr Vince Beard and the President of Women’s Bowls NSW Mrs Pam Andrich. The fact that these guests had travelled from as far away as Adelaide and Melbourne shows the importance they placed on the 100 years of the club. All of them expressed their pleasure at being invited to be part of the celebrations and were keen to talk to members of the club.

The Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormick had visited the club on Wednesday when play was in progress.

There were two obvious highlights at the dinner – the welcome speech given by Men’s Bowls President Joe Bargwanna and the talk by Mark Casey OAM who outlined his initial involvement with bowls from the age of five through to his thirteen years playing for Australia during which he won a number of Commonwealth Games titles and World Championship events.

Betty Powderly and Tom Preston, female and male members with the longest continuous membership, cut the special Centenary Cake.

A number of sponsors supported the club for Centenary Week including the Young Services Club, Young Bowling Club Fishing Club, Young Women’s Bowling Club, Poppa’s Fudge Factory, Sheehan’s Sunnyside Bakery and Grove Estate Wines.

Special thanks are due to Damien Miller and Margo Parker for their organisation of the four tournaments held during the week.

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