The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Spalding Town Bowls Club will today (Thursday) put themselves on the national map when they take part in the national finals of the club two fours competition.
The small South Holland club will contest a national quarter-final at Royal Leamington Spa, having enjoyed a momentous run in the competition.
They are the first Spalding team to do this and only the second team from Lincolnshire to make this stage since Cleethorpes qualified back in 2002.
The route to the nationals wasn’t easy, however, with Town having to play a total of six games against tough teams from Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Cumbria, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire.
The area final was played against a very strong Lancashire side that included the current national triples champions and senior international Chris Gale.
The rink skipped by Jordan Philpott found themselves a few shots behind early doors, but the set captained by Wayne Phoenix was cruising along going 15 shots up at 12 ends.
A few ends later it was a different story, as Spalding Town found themselves going one down on the board and with only a few ends to go it was getting nervous.
However, Spalding fought very hard to put themselves four shots ahead with one end to play after Philpott managed to draw on his rink.
Fortunately, Spalding only dropped a count of three shots which meant they had won the game to put them through to the national quarter-finals.
Rink captain Philpott said: “I would like to congratulate the team on their massive success.”
Area final score: Rink one – Oli Gedney, Adrian Field, Nick Wing and Wayne Phoenix won 22-21. Rink two – David Gedney, Chris Warboys, Richard Vinter and Jordan Philpott drew 19-19.
