With second place secured in their group, Herefordshire welcomed a formidable West Midlands team to Leominster knowing that a win by 34 points or more could steal first place from one of the best short mat bowling counties in England. Whilst that aim would have likely been found at quite high odds with any bookmakers, the opportunity to test themselves against the multi-time Inter County Champions was one that the Bulls looked forward to and offered good practice ahead of the “Premier 2” (second tier) knockouts to come.
Joe Loveys picked up the Bulls only points of the first session with a nail-biting 12-11 win. Meanwhile, Kate Williams lost out 8-17 to an impressive performance from England’s British Isles winning Captain Ross Dunkley. In spite of two battling performances from the pairs of Dean Rudman & Steve Kite and Nic Lloyd & Tony Vitale, West Midlands clinical nature shone with 8-24 and 8-18 losses respectively for Hereforshire.
The Bulls looked to reassert themselves in the second session, with four incredibly close matches taking place. In the triples, John Mills’ trio lost out on the last end 11-12 whilst Bryan Watkins’ team managed to win their final end to take an 8-7 win. A similar story could be found in the fours as Captain Becci Cox’s rink took a 12-10 win following a clean fire to take the jack into the ditch from the boss whilst a spirited performance from Ian Roe’s rink saw them lose out 6-12 to put West Midlands 10-6 up at the halfway stage.
Sadly, that was as good as it got for Herefordshire. Two close games in the singles saw Loveys & Williams on the end of narrow losses whilst West Mids secured maximum points following another strong showing in the pairs. For the triples, it was another one-shot defeat for team Mills with Watkins also losing out by a narrow margin in two games that The Bulls were unlucky to be on the losing side of. In the fours, two dominant performances from West Midlands saw them take 6-19 and 10-24 wins over Cox and Roe’s respective rinks to take an overall 34-6 (245-151) shot victory.
Captain Becci Cox stated that the overall score perhaps did not reflect many of the close games that took place whilst also noting West Midlands strong and clinical performance across the board in what was an enjoyable day’s bowling. By finishing second, Herefordshire have qualified for the “Premier Two” knockout tier (the second tier out of three), qualifying through to the quarter-finals where they await their likely opponents Northamptonshire although this is reliant on the results of outstanding matches.
