In the penultimate round of the Indoor Bowling Association Premier Pairs on Monday 9th March, we saw Young Guns beat Northern Nomads 4-0 while Cheesemakers lost 4-0 to Tee Pegs and Orange Peelers and Radical Heads played out a 2-2 draw. The remaining team in the League Villans had a bye so this now leaves Young Guns top of the league on 46 points with Villans second on 42 points and Cheesemakers third with 39 points. Whilst I would normally just look at the top three I am going to cover all the league positions this week and we have Tee Pegs fourth with 34 points, GLS fifth with 29 points and then anyone of the teams below them could end in the bottom relegation place. In sixth place, we have Radical Heads on 21 points and in seventh place Northern Nomads also on 21 points followed by TOU and Orange Peelers both on 20 points.
I will continue my review of the remaining leagues which have now finished with a look back at the highly successful Tuesday Morning League which was won by Villans who were followed by Cushags and Ellan Vannin. I think we need to look at the true measure of Villans performance in this league as in the eighteen games played they won the first seventeen and drew the last one with Ellan Vannin. In doing this they amassed 94 points which saw them finish 25 points ahead of second-placed Cushags with an overall chalk difference of +355 while Cushags had a chalk difference of +24. A lot of credit though must go to Cushags for their well earned second place and although they are very competitive they are always a pleasure to play against and really seem to enjoy their bowling. Ellan Vannin in third place played well all season as ever and a special mention must go to Smooth Matters who were new to Indoor Bowling and improved throughout the season and achieved their aim not to finish bottom and hopefully come back next season to finish in a much higher position.
The First Division Team League was won by Spinners who won ten out of their fourteen games which saw them finish with 56 points and in second place came Maxums with 46 points and in third place were Smugglers who also finished with 46 points. It was nice to see three new teams in this league this year and we saw rapid improvement throughout the season from CAOS, Cowley Cannonballs and Girl Power.
Finally this week I would like to remind all members of the Isle of Man Indoor Bowling Association that the Annual General Meeting will be held at the NSC Bowls Hall on Friday 27th March at 6-30pm.