Another one up

Club Pairs semi-final this evening, played over eighteen ends. Real tough match. Robert, my opposition skip, has just returned triumphant after being crowned EBF National 2 Bowls Champion on Saturday. He also got through to the quarter-finals of the National 4 Bowls. What an honour to play against him.

We start well, and are leading 7-1 after four ends. Robert is struggling with length after playing on heavy greens at Skegness all week, where they watered every morning. No surprise I'm asking for short jacks from my lead.

Six consecutive winning ends sees them go into a 7-9 lead. No need to panic, we're playing well. We reply with four winning ends and a lead of 13-9.

We then drop five on end fifteen. How could I allow that to happen? We drop another two on the next end to trail 13-16 with two to play. In the penultimate end I manage to knock their shot bowl out, and then draw another for two. As we go into the final end we're one down.

Looking good as we hold two, but Robert's second bowl is a perfect draw. They're holding one, right up against the jack. My draw shot is also perfect, just nudging the jack away and through to give us two. Robert's only option is to nudge their third to reduce us to holding one. I manage to get my last bowl up against their third to make his last shot even more difficult. He's close, but not close enough. We win the end by two, the match by one!

Was really exciting and engaging throughout. As their lead said, pity it wasn't the Final. Really happy with my form this evening. Must concentrate more when playing firing shots. Had some successes, but a few were embarrassingly off target. That's now two appearances on Finals Day, with another semi-final to play tomorrow evening. Here's the scorecard.