Bowls begins its final roll

THE farewell tour for Geelong/Ballarat Premier Bowls kicked off on Saturday for the start of the competition’s final season.

The Geelong Bowls Region board and representatives of the participating clubs believed that while the competition had been strong for a long time, it wasn’t delivering excellent bowls across all clubs or encouraging development of new players.

The competition, which has been an alignment between the Geelong and Ballarat associations, will end at season’s end after more than two decades, and clubs will filter back into their respect- ive local pennant competitions.

Saturday’s prime game was Ocean Grove against Lara, and on paper both sides look to have what’s needed to make an impact this season.

OG recruited strongly in the off-season and seems like the side to beat. The skips for OG are three of last season’s skips — Matthew Flapper, Tony Joel and Mick West. With the addition of Lorne young gun Leigh McIlvenny, this is a strong side.

Lara, on the other hand, has a stable side with the bulk of the players from last season. Lara is a side that is always in your face in trying to make a win happen — loud and brash.

All four skips are experi- enced and will keep this side going throughout the year.

In Saturday’s clash, it seems that the bulk of the contest was close, with each side holding the overall lead by low margins.

Lara skip Brendan Umbers said the game was great to play in for most of the day. However, towards the end, OG skip Tony Joel was having a close game with Anthony Briggs’s rink of lead Joseph Van Baar, Michael Warner and James Derham.

Joel’s side had bowls in the head and Briggs was unable to rest on any in the head and OG scored a seven. This gave them a restart impetus to the whole team and allowed OG to get a few extra shots across the board and end up win

ning 107/86.