BOLT STARS AS DURHAM SECURE FIVE TITLES
SILKSWORTH PLAYER ADDS THREE MORE SUCCESSES TO STUNNING CAREER HAUL
Houghton Dairy Lane hosted this year’s Northern Counties Championships, with seven titles on offer over the two days.
It turned out to be a tremendous weekend for Durham County as they collected five titles.
For Durham, it was once again Silksworth’s David Bolt who stole the show as he landed three titles.
On the first day, Durham landed three of the four titles on offer. In the Fours, the Silksworth rink of Scott Baker (sub), Neal Ridley, Ian Riches and Bolt took the title with a 21-13 win over Lancashire’s Shayne Rimmer.
In the morning semifinal, Bolt had to fend off a late fightback by Northumberland’s England star Chris Yeoman to get home 21-16.
In the Under 25 singles, Silksworth’s Jaxon McKenna was Durham’s representative, but sadly he suffered a heartbreaking 21-20 lastbowl semi-final loss to Northumberland’s Jack Miller.
In the final, the Northumberland star let slip a 14-3 lead and succumbed to a 2116 loss against Lancashire’s Anthony Booth-Young.
The second Durham title came in the invitation Under 25s fours. Only three of the five counties provided squads but it was still played on a round robin format with each game lasting an hour.
Durham’s quartet of Jordan Harston (Hundens), Jaxon McKenna (Silksworth), Bryan Henderson (Seaham Town) and Josh Halcrow (Silksworth) took the honours after winning both their games; an opening 15-5 win over Yorkshire was followed up by an impressive 11-4 win over Lancashire to take the title.
The first day was capped off in style as Durham landed a third title, this time in the two-bowl singles with Silksworth’s main man Bolt once again the shining light. A hard-fought 15-12 semi-final win over Lancashire youngster Anthony Booth-Young was then followed up by a more straight-forward 19-9 win over Yorkshire’s Chris King.
Day two was hit by the weather but once again Durham enjoyed a fruitful day as they secured two of the three titles on offer.
In the blue riband singles. the Bolt bandwagon rolled on again. After a comfortable 214 semi-final win over Lancashire stalwart Rhys Vaughan, the Silksworth star went on to beat Yorkshire’s former England internationalist Mark Walton 21-16 in a cracking final.
That win leaves only the triples missing from Bolt’s Northern Counties collection.
The second Durham title of the day and fifth in total came in the pairs as the Dipton duo of Michael English and George Williams defeated Lancashire’s Dominic McVittie 19-16 in the final.
The Dipton lads defeated Northumberland’s Paul Ging 18-10 in the semi-final.
In the triples, the Darlington RA squad of Keith Burton (sub), Mark Jones and Tony Macey (sub) lost out on an extra end 16-15 in the semifinals against the eventual champion Yorkshire’s Phil Emmerson.
The two-day bonanza was brought forward from early September to give the players ideal preparation for the national championships at Leamington - the premise of the Northern Counties is to bring together each of the five county champions.
The winning of a Northern Counties title was once a highly sought-after honour, sadly the pulling power of the championships has somewhat waned over recent years due to the lure of cash prizes and player commitments. Therefore the rules were relaxed to allow counties to send the runners-up or even the beaten semi-finalists should their champions not be able to compete.
Even then, places were not filled by some counties.
The only disappointment over the two days was the low spectator turn-out to support the Durham players especially as the weather on the Saturday was glorious. However, what was lacking in quantity, was made up for in quality.
In the Bowls England Top club area final, Darlington RA’s run came to an end at Scunthorpe as they were beaten 3-2 by Leicestershire’s New Lount. The winners now head to Leamington for the latter stages.