Gorsley Chapel bowler Joe Loveys completed an unprecedented clean sweep of 5 county short mat bowls titles with success in the Mixed Fours discipline alongside Lea’s Merion Attwood and Shirley and Becci Cox of Woolhope. A field of 10 teams competed in this latest championship and Joe’s team won their round robin group before defeating a Weston team in their semi-final. The team who had to try and stop them in the final was made up of Claire Herbert (Ross), David Millington Jones & Peter Wright (Weston) and Jill Howells (Golden Valley) who had taken their place in the final after an extra end when their semi-final against a Ross team was tied. Despite a resilient performance there was no stopping Joe and his team who took a 12-7 victory and the title.
The same weekend saw the inaugural Over 55 Pairs county championship competition with the 15 teams competing safe in the knowledge that it would be over 30 years before Joe Loveys would be eligible to enter this discipline. At the quarter-final stage Fownhope and Weston were each represented by two teams but only one of those reached the semi-finals where the Weston team of David Millington Jones and Peter Wright had a narrow victory over Tony Vitale (Larruperz) and Ian Park (Ross) to move into the final. The other semi-final saw Sue Dix and Les Williams of Ross beat Pam Park (Ross) and Hazel Vitale (Larruperz) and the Ross pair then came back from an early deficit in the final to take the title by a narrow 10-8 margin.