The World Fours and World Pairs competition was held over the weekend at Chelmsford.

Saturday

Saturday was the fours competition with Hertfordshire entering two of the sixty-four teams. With the teams placed in sixteen groups Hertfordshire’s Jan Rogers, Julia Bruce, Mark Spalding and Darren Brown were in group six and Lisa Miles, Bev Stephenson, Andrew Miles and Alan Hare were in group eleven.  The morning round robin commenced at 09.00 with all sixty-four teams on the mats for their three games. At the end of the morning session whilst we all had a break and some lunch the results were calculated. With the top two teams in each group being placed in the main cup competition and the third and fourth placed teams being placed in the plate competition. Both teams were placed in the plate competition.  The afternoon session started at 14.00. Alan Hare’s team won their first match to reach the last sixteen by winning 7 – 6. Darren Brown’s team also proceeded to the last sixteen by winning 14 – 3. The second round of the knockouts started at 15.30, Alan Hare’s team missed out on mat 21 losing 5 – 10. Darren Brown’s team playing on mat 19 won 11 – 4 and progressed to the last eight.  17.00 and Darren’s team were back on Mat one, at the end of the eight ends it was a draw at six all. There then followed three ends of a one bowl per player tie break session, Darren’s team lost the first end but then applied some pressure to win the following two ends and proceed to the semi-finals.  18.30 and Darren’s team were playing the semi final on mat eleven against the team that had knocked out Alan Hare’s team. Hertfordshire got their revenge, winning 8 – 3 we now had a Hertfordshire team in the plate final. The final started at 20.00, Jan Rogers, Julia Bruce, Mark Spalding and Darren Brown played Natalie Evans, Sam Harvey, Andrew Evans and Andrew Coghlin. After six tight ends our four were 3 – 5 down. End seven and our four took a two shot lead with a good four. The last end saw our four hold a further three for a 10 – 05 win. The final of the main was played on an adjacent mat and was won by Alastair McCrea, Gary McNabb, Ben Pay and Steven Stafford.  The final of the main can be watched on YouTube and you can see the plate final in the background. As the main final finished first, the last two ends of the plate final can be seen in the YouTube video.  Following the presentations our four them rushed to their favourite pub for a well-earned meal and a drink (possibly some prosecco was involved).

Sunday

Sunday morning at 09.00 it all started again with the World pairs. Our eight contestant’s from yesterday split into four teams and were joined by six more Hertfordshire players  so we had seven teams in a field of 128 pairs.  The teams were split as per the day before, this time into 32 groups of four teams. Group five has three Hertfordshire teams in it, they were Bev Stevenson and Lisa Miles, Alan Hare and Andrew Miles, and Dennis Mack and Jeff Branch. Julia Bruce and Jan Rogers were in group seven, Brian McGivern and Alan Spicer in group fourteen, Darren Brown and Mark Spalding in group twenty-one and finally Martin Nash and Neil Rixon in Group twenty-seven. Following the mornings play three of our teams made it through to the cup with the other four playing in the plate. Martin Nash and Neil Rixon won their first game in the main cup competition to make the last thirty-two.  The other two pairs of Darren Brown and Mark Spalding, and Dennis Mack and Jeff Branch lost out in the first round. In their second-round match Martin and Neil played on mat seven where they lost out with a score of 3 – 9. Our four other pairs in the plate competition all lost out in the first round.

The Pairs main competition was won by Martin McNicholl and Gary McNabb who was one of the four that also won the fours on the Saturday. A great weekend for Hertfordshire.