DOUBLE HIT AS TRIPLES – AND FANS – MISS GOLD
IF it was tough for Australia’s men’s triples lawn bowlers to narrowly miss gold yesterday, spare a thought for their mates – they missed out on $1 beers.
Aron Sheriff, Nathan Rice and Barrie Lester fell just short of victory in the final yesterday, with Scotland edging to a thrilling 19-14 win.
But it was the locals at the Gold Coast’s Club Helensvale, where Rice and Sheriff work, who also missed the taste of sweet gold – XXXX Gold that is – with a regular customer promising to put on $1 pots if the boys were victorious.
“Luckily I haven’t got my phone on me,” Rice joked.
“No, they’ve been great supporters of us, they’ve given us jobs and I’m sure they’re all proud of us.
“It’s not dollar pots but I’m sure they’re still happy with silver.”
Scotland player Darren Burnett, who won the Scots the match with a couple of crucial shots, had a minor dig at the Aussies after the game, declaring “we beat the Aussies in their backyard”.
But Sheriff said the boys in green and gold would not engage in any sledging, insisting there was no bad blood between the teams.
“Obviously the goal was to get gold but we had a tightly fought final and the Scottish guys to their credit played clutch shots when needed,” Sheriff said.
“We’ll leave those sorts of comments to him (Burnett).
“We’ve got a good relationship, I think, with the Scottish guys. They’re obviously an extremely good team and at the moment they’re probably the benchmark so we need to lift our game but we’ll leave the gibes to them.”
The Australian men’s lawn bowls team head into the finals for the fours event today, with Bulletin columnist Brett Wilkie taking part.
“We’ll go and debrief with the coach once it all sinks in and I’m sure we’ll pick something out we can do better,” Sheriff said.