By Janet Barnardo
Once again, Klipbank was the host club for the Midlands Pairs, with the ladies’ teams coming from Ladysmith Country Club, The Nest and Klipbank, and the Men’s teams from Ladysmith Country Club, The Nest, Bergville and Klipbank.
On Saturday morning, in perfect conditions, the games began but the fun really started after tea as the bowlers descended on the greens. For the second game, the wind decided to join in, and oh boy did it blow. This really made playing extremely difficult but unperturbed, the bowlers carried on. As a spectator, you could see how badly the wind affected the bowls which were either short, through or the wind had pushed them to the other side of the rink.
This continued into the third game, but at the end of Saturday, we had the ladies’ teams that would play the finals on Sunday morning and the two teams to play for third and fourth. These teams were Barbara Elworthy and Veronica Malan against Barbara Baleri and Sioux Le Grange playing the final, and Charmaine Van Der Merwe and CJ Fourie against Patricia Cunninghame and Nora Simpson for third and fourth place.
For the men, the semi-finals and finals were to be played on Sunday. The games began at 9am, again in perfect conditions, and the men’s teams were Stuart Longmore and Louie Schmidt against Graham Baird and Gavin Robinson, both teams from the Nest and Bob Corringham and Neal Singh against Donovan Fischer and Brett Gilder, both teams from Klipbank.
The Ladies’ Midlands Pairs Winners were Barbara Elworthy and Veronica Malan with Barbara Baleri and Sioux Le Grange being runners-up. Charmaine and CJ just managed to pip Tiger and Nora for third place. Excellent bowls played by the ladies and congratulations to each and every one.
The men’s semi-finals were also exciting to watch but alas, only the winners can go forward and play in the finals. So the final men’s game was between Klipbank’s Donovan Fischer and Brett Gilder against Stuart Longmore and Louie Schmidt, now that was nail-biting stuff, and the winners were decided on the last end when Donovan managed to draw his last bowl to get the winning point.
Needless to say, the wind also came back at the latter part of this game, just to make the game even harder, but both teams deserved to be winners and the game was fantastic.
Third place went to Gavin Robinson and Graham Baird who just out-bowled Bob and Neal but nobody gave up and to these men, to every bowler who took part in this tournament, I need to say congratulations. The district play-offs will be played in Mtunzini in early October, good luck to you all.
