Dukes Park star Andy Deighton earns Eastfield Singles Merit success

In the first round Brian Dalby (Borough) fought out a close, 21-19, win against Ashley Brunton-Douglas (Eastfield) while Adam Chilvers won another close, all-North Cliff, game against Justin Trotter 21-19,, writes David Muir.

Other close games included Toni Walton (Doncaster) winning 21-20 against Ed McCormack (North Cliff) and Paul Morgan (Whitby) scraping in by the same margin against Harry Old.

In the second round Dalby crashed out against his clubmate Jo Gates by 21-7 while Robert Child had a very tight, 21-20, win against Kenny Wale. A fluke of the draw saw husband and wife Billy and Sue Holdsworth facing each other after winning their first games with Sue coming out on top by 21-19.

The third round saw Peter Strutt (Doncaster) win 21-12 against Scott Wardman (North Cliff) to face another North Cliff bowler, Alan Landers, who beat Lisa Watson (Hunmanby) 21-12.

Jo Gates had another good win, 21-10 this time, against Denise Dobson (Dukes Park) to face Nigel Trotter who won 21-8 against Child.

In the bottom half of the draw Andy Deighton (Dukes Park) beat Sue Holdsworth 21-15 to face his clubmate Kevin Gates who won 21-5 against Chilvers.

The quarter final line-up was completed when Phil Todd (Hunmanby) had a 21-12 win against Chris Dobson and Geoff Oldham won a marathon game 21-18 against his Nunmanby clubmate Jennie Allen.

The top half quarter=finals saw Landers end Strutt’s fine performance with a 21-15 win and Trotter progress with a 21-17 win against Jo Gates.

In the other half of the draw Deighton eased through with a 21-9 win against his clubmate Kevin Gates to face Todd who also beat a clubmate in Oldham by 21-13.

In the first semi-final Landers made a fine comeback from 14-19 down to beat Trotter 21-19 while the veteran Todd just failed to beat Deighton, going down by the same 21-19 margin.

The final was a very competitive affair as would expected with these two bowlers.

Deighton opened up a 15-6 lead after 8 ends and the 17-7 after 10 ends. At this point Landers hit form and won 7 ends on the trot to tail by a single point. Deighton then won an end only for Landers to level at 18-18 after 20 ends. Deighton then wrapped things up by winning the next 2 ends to win 21-19.

This Friday there will be an Over-60s singles merit at Whitby while on Sunday there is Borough’s Tyne Cup Open Singles.

On Saturday Whitby were our sole surviving team in the Yorkshire Hutchinson Cup second round and travelled to Magnet Sports, Tadcaster, to face Cowcliffe A (Huddersfield), the latter winning 219-196.

In the Radley Cup Brid Bay took on Hipperholme & Lightcliffe (Halifax) at Whitkirk (Leeds).

In a chastening experience Bay won only a single game, and that 21-20, in a 251-133 defeat.

North Cliff travelled to Swillington (Castleford) and lost 246-194 to Ossett C & BC (Wakefield) and ended our interest in the Yorkshire cups for this season.

On Monday our two Yorkshire Merit qualifiers travelled to Guiseley for the final stages of the competition, David Birch (Hunmanby) lost 21-18 to Kez Smith (Crossgates) while Chris Dobson (Dukes Park) drew eventual runner-up Stuart King (Pudsey) and went down 21-13.