Friends scrape a win at Iver Heath

Tuesday 14^th May ‘24

When we woke to heavy rain I suspect many of today’s players, like me, sighed and gathered their wets ready for the afternoon’s play. However the rain stopped during the morning and we were blessed with a dry afternoon and the sun even made a fleeting appearance.

The club provided an excellent lunch of ham salad with French bread for the Friends, prepared by Betty and her team.

Looking forward to the game

On the Green

Prior to the match we gathered on the green and path for a photo of all the players. President Anne-Marie then welcomed the Friends and introduced her Captain Linda and me as the Friends Match Captain, to the players. We each called out our respective rinks and the game started with one on the first 2 ends and 18 ends to be played in total. It was fairly heavy but players were managing to reach and there were some good heads along the 5 rinks and shouts of encouragement. It was lovely to catch up with old friends and meet new ones and good to hear the banter on the green. Total scores for each side were quite even on 3 rinks but both sides had a heavily winning/losing rink. Iver Heath had 3 winning rinks but The Friends won by 4 shots overall (85-81).

Top Rink for IHBC was David C, Sylvia B, Cathy M and Rod E. Top Rink for Friends was Frank Botting (Wilts), Bryan Robinson (Hereford), me and Barrie Emanuel (Surrey).

: Iver Heath Top Rink

: Friends Top Rink

Following the game we were served delicious homemade chicken pie dinner followed by a meringue topped with ice-cream and fruit, our compliments again to Betty & her team and thanks too to Gordon on the bar for serving us with drinks. Captain Linda thanked us for coming to the club to extend their 75year celebrations into 2024.
I introduced the Friends’ Exec in attendance to the club members and spoke a little about the founding of the Friends and its continued support of Bowls. Eight counties were represented including Beds, Bucks, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Herts, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Wilts, players giving a little cheer as their county was announced.
I presented Captain Linda with the framed certificate as a memento of our special Celebration match with them. She appeared to be both surprised and delighted.

The day finished with a very large raffle organised by Cathy. No luck for me this time though!