Tight game ends in defeat
West Lothian faced the toughest of tasks against defending champions East Lothian at the ELCO green ( Tranent) in their opening match in the Hamilton Trophy and in an epic encounter suffered a narrow four shot defeat (119-115).
Alex Marshall MBE was the chief architect and principal driving force for East Lothian with the world stage star serving up a master class performance that broke the hearts of a bold West Lothian team effort, and destroyed his opposition rink skipped by fellow internationalist Thomas Mann.
But Marshall’s 22 shot victory ended up sharing the Garden County limelight with fellow skip Scott Kennedy who tipped the scales of match victory with his spectacular burning of the jack on his penultimate end.
Kennedy took to the mat challenged by master scoreboard pressures and shots against him, but targeting the head with its destruction in mind he received the loud roar of the crowd as his fierce strike exploded on the jack and burnt it good and proper.
The replayed end rubbed more salt in the West Lothian wound with Kennedy skipping his front-three to a count of 4 shots that set the scene for a tightrope climax and forced WL onto the back-foot across the six rinks.
Wins for the rinks skipped by Kennedy and Billy Mellors were narrow (one and two) but supported the massive contribution from Marshall to hold off the challenging wins achieved by WL skips, Grant Logan, Andrew Dunnett, and Neil Speirs.
East Lothian made the brighter start to capture the first of the three seven end phases, 43-31, and the home county also answered pressure with a strong 49-33 dominance of the third, after West Lothian had pleased their support with a sparkling 51-27 supremacy on the second.
Mann and his rink of Jamie Aitken, Alec Allan, and Steven Fleming lost 17- 1 over the opening seven ends then a further collapse from 19- 9 saw them thumped, 33- 11 having counted at only 7 of the 21 ends.
Ray Logan added 1, 4, 1 to skip Andy Semple, Bair Mackie, and Gary Smith into a 16-15 lead before piped 2120 by Mellors while Kennedy edged out Frazer Muirhead, David Lamb, John Aitken, and Sandy McDougall, 20-18.
Grant Logan played the star role for WL skipping brother Greg at third and a front-end of Drew Paterson and Jordan Pearce to a 27- 14 win that included a magnificent count of 7 against Glenn Blair.
Dunnett skipped Ewan Shearer, Scott Logan and Calum Logan into a 12-2 lead then did enough to deliver a 21-14 win over Brian Young while Steven Forrest, Mark Allison, James Speirs Jnr and Neil Speirs finished with a 3 to pip John McCrorie, 18-17.