A Quiet Week

The way the Nines schedule has worked out the men have three consecutive byes, and following the withdrawal of Fossway from the league it means there will be four Tuesdays on the trot without a game.  This Tuesday was the second such blank week, and as there were no other matches to re-arrange the evening remained blank.  However, with temperatures the way they have been lately not too many people were complaining.

The ladies continued their surge up the table with another 12-0 win against Seaton Delaval.  With this rich vein of form it’s doubly unfortunate that next week’s match against Ponteland has been postponed due to our agreeing to host the Bell Cup this year, following the late withdrawal of Morpeth St George’s.   But one week off shouldn’t hurt as much as the four weeks for the men.

The West Tyne match this week was an away game against league leaders Haltwhistle.  If you had to choose a match in which to lose half a dozen regular players this wouldn’t be it, but that shouldn’t take anything away from Haltwhistle, who have won all their other games this season.  They duly won this fixture 6-1: our only winning rink won by just two shots, and although one of our other rinks lost only by a single shot the overall.result was never in doubt.

The result on the “an” rink (two Brians and a Susan) was a remarkable affair, with the mere scorecard doing no justice to the way things went.  Elvaston got the one shot allowed on each of the first two ends to lead 2-0. We then dropped an amazing 19 shots over the next 5 ends (4,4,3,3,5).  When we then managed to get the shot on the eighth end the tactic was to try a longer jack, with a different mat placing also. This worked so well that our team won the next eight ends to go 21-19 up. At this point there was another very bad end –  six against -and although we won the final two ends the match was lost 25-26. There was no bonus for winning 12 of the 18 ends!

We referred at the start to the ladies having a game against Ponteland postponed next week; by concidence the men had their friendly with Ponteland cancelled at the last minute as the visitors could not raise a team.  That made for an even quieter week – though with the Bell Cup taking place at our club and the Challenge Cup being held on Saturday, next week looks like having plenty of activity.