On a sunny Saturday afternoon, we welcomed our good friends Crosskeys to Fields Road for this MBA Division 1 clash. Crosskeys are the defending champions and with a star studded team they are certainly huge favourites to retain their title and could well go on to achieve even bigger things, so we knew we had to try to make home advantage count.
In a shock experimental move the decision was taken to play in the other direction to our normal MBA match day rinks. This led to an interesting afternoon with players who did well reporting their rink played well, whereas those who didn’t do so well complaining their rink was tricky………..so nothing new there!
The game began fairly tightly with Crosskeys holding a 4 shot lead on 5 ends, that was increased to 13 shots on 10 ends, the mister men pulled the deficit back to just 6 shots on 15 ends, but once again at the business end of the game the Keys pulled away and surged home by a margin of 36 shots, 56-92 (0-14 points).
On rink 2, there was a very good game between Ken McKinnon, Chris Beale, Richie Murphy, and Dave Hill who played Paul Watkins, Kieron Davies, Ian Williams and Ian Slade. The Keys led 2-5 on 5 ends, and 5-7 on 10 ends, the margin remained only 2 shots at 9-11 on 15 ends before finishing 13-16 to the visitors on 21 ends.
On rink 3, the tightest & most exciting game of the day saw Pontymister’s Mike Lyons, model and camera man Ethan Simmonds, Roger Simms and Roger Venn take on Andrew Williams, Darren Hobbs, Tom Hancock and Danny Davies Jnr. The Mister men roared into a 8-1 lead on 5 ends, but the Keys came back strongly to trail just 11-8 on 10 ends. Pontymister won 4 of the next 5 ends including a count of “4” on the 11th end to lead 19-9 on 15 ends, but could only win 1 more of the last 6 ends. Trailing 20-17 going into the last end Welsh International skipper Daniel Davies jnr played a fantastic last bowl to make a “5” and grab the points for the keys.
On rink 4, Pontymister’s Dave Bowd, Jason Bradshaw, Graham Smith, and Nick Harris had a bad day at the office against Paul Duggan, Simon Bushell, Dan Davies and current Welsh International Christoph Klefenz. The mister men’s were completely outplayed by the Keys who found the line & weight on the tight hand superbly. Skip Nick Harris ended the day with a lot more grey hairs, battling hard to reduce the deficit, but the Keys were just too strong on the day. The score was 2-8 on 5 ends, 5-12 on 10 ends, 7-21 on 15 ends, before Pontymister managed to reach double figures for a 10-30 thrashing.
On rink 5 Pontymister’s Chris Simmonds, Sid Phillips, Lloyd Turnbull, and Ronnie rocket man Morgan were involved in a good battle with Russel (Rucca) Bryant, Tony Brown, Tom Martin, and talented skip Joe Mower. On 5 ends it was 2-4 to the Keys, who increased their lead to 4-10 on 10 ends, but the mister men came back strongly winning 4 out of the next 5 ends to level the game 11-11 on 15 ends, only for the Keys to seize control over the important last 6 ends, winning 5 of them to finish 13-24 winners.
After the match we enjoyed a friendly hour with our Crosskeys pals and enjoyed Captain Lloyd’s superb buffet which from a Pontymister perspective was the highlight of the day.
We thank Crosskeys for their company and wish them a very successful season. In particular best wishes to Christoph Klefenz and Danny Davies jnr for the home internationals later this month at Leamington Spa and the European championships in Ayr in September.