Bowls round-up: Malpas Sports giving it their best to hunt down Chirk
Malpas Sports turned on the after-burners in a desperate bid to catch the runaway leaders in Shropshire’s major winter bowling league in Whitchurch, writes Malcolm Fletcher.
Champions of the District Invitation Winter League in 2021, Malpas were too hot for winless Calverhall, beating them 10-0 (126-47 on aggregate) with father and son Carl and Ben Hinton their best singles winners.
The result cut the gap on Chirk to 10 points, but the champions elect kept on track with a 7-3 (105-87) success over District that featured another father and son pairing, Mike and Jordan Riley, winning one the doubles games 21-6.
Woore edged Adderley 6-4 (118-109), last winter's champions Archibald Worthington brushed aside Bridgewater 8-2 (116-72) and Crewe saw off lowly Elephant & Castle 7-3 (118-96).
Bridgewater will need to do a lot better if they are to halt Chirk’s title march on Tuesday night before Crewe face Woore on Wednesday, District meet Calverhall on Thursday and Friday's clash of week featuring Malpas and AWC.
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Another year of growth is in prospect for a leading Shropshire bowls league that has its AGM on Tuesday night.
At least two new teams are set to compete in the main Friday night divisions of the Molson Coors Mid Shropshire League - and there has been one confirmed application to join the Denis Lewis Thursday Division, with others in the pipeline.
That’s the encouraging news that will reported to club delegates at the annual meeting at Wellington’s Sir John Bayley Club from 7.30pm.
And officers are confident there will be more interest before the March executive meeting cut-off.
One Friday application is from Stockton and would mark a welcome return to the Telford-based league for a village club that last played in it in 2019.
“The AGM might see the introduction of 11-a-side matches in division one from April, if a proposal from last year’s runners-up Sinclair gets approved,” said a league spokesman. “That’s one of plenty of rule changes to be voted on, including a revamp of the competition rules that would see the introduction of yet more new ones such as a Ladies Merit, Handicap Singles and a Beginners Merit.
“We also have a couple of vacancies to fill, the desire to stand down by stalwart servant Steve Wall from the vice-chairman and webmaster posts being two of them.”
