Successful summer for crown green bowlers capped by brilliant Eastfield and Whitby Festivals

Looking backwards the hot, dry weather made for a lot of problems for clubs as the lack of rain meant extra watering with added costs.

It also meant that greens suffered and few could honestly be said to be in anything like good condition in spite of the best efforts of the greenkeepers. That said there was a very good summer of bowling.

First of all there were two big events, the Whitby Festival in May and the Eastfield Festival in August.

The Whitby one has been running for a number of years now, initially in August but switching to May because of difficulties with the number of tourists in summer, but the Eastfield one is a resurrection of the old East Coast Festival which moved from green to green in Scarborough, Hunmanby and Bridlington.

It was discontinued as entries dropped but it was decided to try to revive it at a single venue as Eastfield was facing financial problems and a successful event might help keep them afloat.

The two Festivals followed essentially the same format with five days of bowling, each day being a different format.

Mondays were singles, but played in sets of 11 ends rather than 21 up.

The Tuesdays differed as Whitby was played as three player teams, a pair and a single, while at Eastfield it was a Drawn Triples with four groups playing a Round Robin to qualify for the semi-finals.

On Wednesday there were Power Play Singles, on Thursday straight doubles and Friday was singles in both.

Although some bowlers only entered on one or two days the majority of entries were for the full weeks in both cases.

This was probably in part because the Finals Day on Friday was only open to people who had entered the full event.

The Whitby Festival attracted more entries (55), possibly because it is a well-established event and also because it is not during the main school holidays, but Eastfield still attracted 41 full entrants plus a number of “extras”.

Unlike 2025 when Gaz Lally from Crossgates, Leeds won on each day of the Whitby Festival and, by doing so, qualified for the All-England Champion of Champions this year the honours were shared with the winner of the Finals Day singles being Whitby’s Kenny Wale.

At Eastfield the pattern was much the same with one of the one day entrants, home bowler Mike Carter, springing a surprise by winning the Singles in Sets on Monday.

The final was played in atrocious conditions between two North Cliff bowlers, Alan Landers and Robert Child, with Child coping with the torrential rain and sodden green the better for a 21-20 win to condemn Landers to his second Festival finals defeat in the season.

Special thanks are due to Paul Morgan for all his work in organising these events.

The other big event was the 87th competition for the 107 year old Gambart Baines Challenge Cup with 103 entrants.

This year saw a slightly different format with the qualifying rounds being played on four local greens, Borough (30 entrants), Eastfield (29 entrants), Robin Hood’s Bay (22 entrants) and Whitby (22 entrants).

This was due to difficulties with the Alexandra Bowls Centre which has usually hosted most of the qualification and all the later stages of the competition.

This year 8 qualified from each of the local greens and then played from the round of 32 to the final at Alexandra Park.

As is to be expected the standard of bowling was high throughout the day but there was one especially interesting fact when Laura love from Harehills Park, Leeds reached the semi-finals.

Although, because of the limited available archive information, it cannot be absolutely confirmed it is generally believed that this is the first time that a lady bowler has reached this stage.

Unfortunately in the semi-final Laura came up against previous winner Gareth Coates from Halifax who went on to win this year beating five times winner James Wilcox from Crossgates, Leeds 21-12.

He also became only the 13th bowler to win the Gambart Baines more than once.

By some strange chance the first person to do was the very winner of the cup, Zina Smith from Cleckheaton, in 1919 and then again in 1936.

For anyone who is interested there is a history of the Gambart Baines Challenge Cup on Facebook.

The Junior Gambart Baines, The Roger Crowther Cup, was staged on the same day with 11 entrants 9 of whom were visitors.

The two local bowlers both put up good performances, especially Alix Stallard (Hunmanby) who played Logan Preston from Pudsey and only lost 21-15 to the winner of the Junior Waterloo.

The eventual winner was Louie Taylor from Crossgates, Leeds.

In Yorkshire’s Eric Hutchinson Cup Borough, Hunmanby and Whitby all reached the second round, Borough having had a preliminary round bye and then a first round win and the other two winning their preliminary round matches and having byes in the first round before all three were eliminated in the next round.

Bridlington Bay and North Cliff both lost their Hutchinson Cup preliminary round matches but then were entered in the Dick Radley Cup.

Bridlington Bay won their first round match in this but then were eliminated by Littlemoor but North Cliff progressed to the semi-finals where they also came up against Littlemoor and lost narrowly, 219-215.

None of our teams in the Inter-District competitions progressed beyond the first stages with the Ladies’ team winning against Leeds bit losing to eventual winners Huddersfield, the Men’s team losing twice to Harrogate and the Veterans being knocked out of the Hickson Trophy by Sheffield.

There was an innovation in the local Knockout Cup this year with the introduction of a Shield competition for first match losers.

This proved to be successful, the winners being Borough B with North Cliff A taking the Cup.

In the local leagues Hunmanby A won the Saturday Singles League !st Division and Westgate A winning the 2nd Division.

The Evening Singles League Division 1 was won by North Cliff A and Dukes Park B won Division 2.

In the Over-60s Doubles League there was an upset as Hunmanby A’s Division 1 dominance was ended with Borough A taking the title and Westgate A topped Division 2.

Finally Whitby won the Evening Doubles title.

The Winter Merit programme now starts with an Open Singles at Eastfield on November 8.

The start time for this is 9am, entry is on the day and bowlers are asked to be present by 8.55am to enable the draw to be made for a prompt start.

Depending on entry numbers there will be a consolation Tea & Biscuits (T&B) drawn pairs competition for first game losers and late arrivals.

Anyone wishing to enter the T&B only should be there by 11am.