Tonight saw an epic battle with Shirley Ray and Dave Vintin versus Jamie & Tania Ward in the P&D mixed pairs competition. The sad thing was that both pairs were from Leigh Park and one pair had to go out.
The match started slowly and tentatively with neither pair giving much and after 6 ends the score was 4-5 to The Wards. The next 9 ends gave the Wards the impetus and they moved ahead of the home drawn pair 7-17 after 15 ends, heads could have gone down and heads could have assumed victory, but with a high scoring six on the 16th end Shirley & Dave pulled it back to 13-17 with 5 ends to play.
After that six Shirley & Dave scored on the next three ends taking it to 19-17 on the 19th end. The light was rapidly fading as it was 8.30 and Jamie & Tania took 2 points on the 20th end to level the score with only one end to play.
On end 21 Shirley and Dave got woods on the jack and forced Jamie to play some aggressive shots to try and dislodge the jack from its stranglehold, but as Jamie played his last wood, he moved one and reduced the count to 2, so Shirley didn’t have to play the very last wood and the 2 points gave them victory on the last end to win 21-19.
Shirley and Dave are now in the quarter final with an away tie, opponents tbc.
The match ended with good wishes on both sides with the game being played in a tremendous spirit, but then again we are all from the Park so what do you expect.
Up The Park !!!