The Two Counties squad continue their good winning run beating Tiverton Borough at Honiton by three rinks to one with a 99-61 score line, writes Tony Broughton.

Tiverton turned up one player down so one rink was triples.

Fred Cowey, Rita Barwick and Shirley Hiscocks were 25-20 winners and Peter Baker, Berry Maynard, Heather Chambers and Ken Clarke won 25-12, whist the rink of Di Hawkins, Ann Hillyear, Carol Smith and Malcolm Seaborne went down narrowly at 20-18. However, the top rink was the one of Daphne Courtney, Brenda Harris, Dennis Hillyear and Mike Smith, who claimed a 31-9 success.

In friendly matches the game against Chardstock only played over a dozen ends before rain stopped play and the Crewkerne match was called off after Honiton arrived because their green was waterlogged!

Honiton had a good home win against Axminster by 83-53. Stuart Crawford’s rink lost 14-19, Scott Eveleigh’s rink won 20-14, Bill Nichol’s rink won 18-10, but the top rink was that of Ken Morfey, Ted Cox and Tracy Crawford who secured a 30-10 success.

In the Over-60s League fixtures the A team won only one rink in the away match against Ottery B and so banked just two points.

The B team fared better as they collected six of the eight points on offer in a home game with Dunkeswell and the C team banked all eight points in their match at Hemyock.

away getting 2 points. The “B” Team did better with 6 from 8 points at

The C and B teams will remain in their respective Divisions as aresult of the latest results. However, with two games left to play the A team could still slip into the relegation zone.

There was bad news from Leamington Spa with Sue Evans having to withdraw from the National Two Wood Championship through illness. This is so disappointing for her given al the hard work she completed to book her berth at the finals.

Carole Binmore did well in her first match in the same competition, but was extremely unlucky to lose to the Nottinghamshire contestant in the next game.

In front, with one end to play, Carole played the jack too short, very uncharacteristic for her!

It was returned and her opponent gained the advantage casting the jack to her favoured length winning the point and levelling the match. Carole then lost the extra end.

As a point of interest I was asked by a spectator a week later, if it was correct for the marker, a qualified umpire, to toss the coin and the challenger call.

The answer is no, this is in fact an infringement of the laws of the sport, but it is what happened in this instant.

Now Carole did not object, but what the umpires do not seem to understand is that some players do know the laws and if one goes into an important situation knowing full well a laws has been broken this surely causes them a little anxiety!

In Bowls the opponents must toss for the jack, this has always been the law and one that became compulsory some 20 years ago, but is one of the many that umpires chose to ignore, or not uphold, hence my withdrawal from the Umpires Association at the end of 2011.