Sunday the 19th January saw Hertfordshire hold its prestigious county singles competition at Stevenage. This is the last of this seasons County/ National Qualifier competitions and as always we saved the best till last. Twenty competitive bowlers arrived at the Leisure Centre ready for an 09.30 start. Our Twenty entrants were split into four groups of five. Each bowler was guaranteed a minimum of four eleven end games and spent any spare time marking some of the other games. The top two from each group progressed to the knockout stage in the afternoon.
Our Quarter finalists were Jeff Branch, Darren Brown, Bill Gearing, Alan Hare, Neil Rixon, Alan Spicer, Bev Stevenson and Malcolm Warwick. Our Quarter finals were played at the far end of the rink. On mat five Alan Hare beat Malcolm Warwick 13 – 6. On mat six Darren Brown beat Bill Gearing 11- 6. On mat seven Neil Rixon beat Alan Spicer 13 – 5. On mat eight Jeff Branch beat Bev Stevenson 16 - 5
We now all moved to the front four mats for the semi-finals. Mat one had Darren Brown playing Alan Hare, Darren progressed to the final beating Alan 15 – 5. Mat four had Jeff Branch playing Neil Rixon, Jeff held on for an 11 – 8 win and became our second finalist.
The third/fourth place playoff was on mat two. With Hertfordshire only being awarded three places at the nationals this game was crucial to our two bowlers. In a tight game Alan Hare and Neil Rixon kept it close and were level at eight all after nine ends. The last two ends were very tight with Neil taking the win for that third place at Melton Mowbray with a score of 10 – 9.
So now to our final on mat three between Darren Brown and Jeff Branch. Like the game taking place on mat two this was very close as well. In fact at nine ends this game was also tied with the score at seven all. At the completion of eleven ends it was still tied, so an extra deciding end was played. This twelfth end went in Darren’s favour, with a score of 12 – 10 Darren Brown becomes Hertfordshire’s singles champion. Congratulations to Darren and all our bowlers for a fantastic day of exciting competition.
We are now all looking forward to those national competitions at Melton Mowbray in March and April.