Bainfield’s aim to hit the ground running in the opening match of the indoor bowls premier league ended up well off target with Edinburgh’s elite suffering a substantial 35 shot defeat on their away visit to Aberdeen.
Aberdeen were last season’s early high flyers so their 95-60 victory over Bainfield is perhaps no surprise however Gavin Smith the visitors newly appointed team manager had hoped to catch the home squad off guard and lacking sharpness. “The final score hasn’t left me gutted as it misrepresents the quality gap between the two teams and it is not an out and out disaster to lose your opening match as long as it is away from home”, reflected Smith. “Our lads probably didn’t find their feet quickly enough allowing Aberdeen to inflict us with an 18 shot deficit on the first seven-end phase of the match but we did manage to steady the ship on the second phase and edged it by a single shot”.
End 15 brought heartbreak for Bainfield via a nightmare outcome for icon figure Robert Marshall who looked to have produced a heroic conversion when ditching the jack with an explosive strike. “The sequence of events that followed in a flash left us all open mouthed” said Smith who explained “ Rabs striking bowl also winged our only back position on the carpet out of the rink then the position of his striking toucher in the ditch was challenged and ruled to be out of play by a fraction of an inch”.
The comic opera was suddenly converted into a tragic one for Bainfield with the potential of a two shot conversion ending up as a cruel seven against, an outcome made more significant by the fact that Craig Paterson was in the process of carding a mighty 5. “The impact on our match score and morale across the carpet was that instead of being in with a chance at 15 shots down and on a roll we were 24 down and cursing our bad luck”, said Smith.
There was more misfortune ahead for Bainfield and in particular a last end horror show for Smith whose head would be swimming when watching the opposition skip produce a brilliant conversion that gained an eight shot reward on the Aberdeen side of the card. The phase scores were, 16-34; 23-22, 21-39 leaving Smith to analyse a disappointing start and crushing finish to the match. Smith, Marshall, and team captain Colin Hutchison all suffered double-figure defeats but fellow skip Craig Paterson delivered an impressive performance to beat their opposition.
Paterson fought hard to lead 11-9 after 14 ends then put in a strong finish to skip Jamie Reid, Danny McCourt, and Daniel Gormley to a 21-12 win over A McKay. Smith and his rink of Adam Brock, Kerr McKail, and Alex Hurry Jnr trailed 12-3 after nine ends and slumped to a 30-10 defeat from Mike Stephen. Marshall and his front-three of Stephen Pringle, Steven Pilley, and Kevin Tennant stood 24-6 down after 15 ends and lost 26-13 to G Forbes.
Hutchison skipped Mark McIntosh, Brian Stoddart, and John McDermott into a 13-12 lead after 12-ends but suffered the loss of a 4 and a 5 as they slipped to a 27-16 defeat from E Gallan.