Silvia and Sheila make it a hat-trick in Matthews Plate
Fate and the luck of the draw are clearly on the side of flat green bowlers Silvia Newbery and Sheila Payne at Lilleshall Hall.
They won the club’s the Matthews Plate competition in the grounds of the National Sports Centre thanks to an extraordinary set of circumstances.
Club spokeswoman Liz Carid explained: “Not only had Silvia and Sheila been drawn together in it for the third year running, but they recorded their third consecutive win!”
A match of two nine end sets of four bowl pairs saw them score a two-sets to love win over Caird and Theresa Hancock.
In the men’s draw, four pairs contested a round-robin tournament of three eight-end rounds of four bowl ties with Mike Caird and Mark Hussell’s two wins just edging it.
Despite mixed weather, the club’s friendly matches are continuing and Lilleshall lost to Stone Crown by the narrowest of margins in a well contested game played on Stone’s newly refurbished green.
“With Lilleshall ‘borrowing’ a couple of players, the game consisted of 12 pairs games, each played over 11 ends. All our players played twice and the pairs were mixed up after the first six games,” said Caird. “On the usual measure Stone beat us by one shot (108 to 107). However, over the 12 games Lilleshall won five and drew three, only losing four, and the best win was by five shots, by the pair of Ian Harper and Rob Attwood.”
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A proud Shropshire family now boasts two county bowls Merit titles.
Susie Lawson is the new Lancashire Ladies Merit champion to add to the superb trophy that her father Rich holds as the reigning Shropshire Senior Merit champ.
And her triumph on Saturday came shortly before she heads back to Nesscliffe after graduating with a first class university degree on Merseyside en route to starting a Masters in the autumn.
Lawson won what was the Lancashire qualifier for the British Ladies Merit by beating Sylvia Bentham in the final 21-13 at Chorley Subs after defeating Linda Blackwell in the semis.
Having won the British Ladies County Averages Winners Classic last year when playing for Ormskirk, Lawson will now be joined by Bentham in heading to the British Merit finals at Hawcoat in Cumbria on July 13.
