Ladywell start the bowls season off with defeat to Southwark Sports

On a gloriously sunny day on Saturday 10th May, Ladywell kicked off the 2025 John Collyer Bowls League season with a home match against Southwark Sports.

The match started off in a bit of confusion around a new league rule, which states that matches are played over three triples, unless one club can't raise a full nine players and notifies their opponents at least a week in advance, so they can agree to play just two triples.

Ladywell had a full nine players ready to play and hadn't heard anything to say otherwise from Southwark Sports. But when their opponents arrived at the green, they only had two triples ready to play.

Unfortunately, this meant one of the Ladywell triples - Sally Bryan, Merlin Ramdawar and new club member George Witter had to sit out the match.

So, two rinks played and the story was pretty much the same for both Ladywell teams. On rink one, another new member, Robert Witter, along with Alvin Nelson and Skip Steve Marlow started slowly, losing the first four ends to be 5-0 down. But they rallied and by the break after nine ends, Southwark Sports were leading 8-4. After the break, this lead was extended to 9-4, before Ladywell scored three on the 11th end to narrow the gap to just two shots, at 7-9. But a run of four straight winning ends for the Southwark Sports team gave them a commanding lead of 19-7 after 15 ends and although the Ladywell team scored one on the 16th end, Southwark Sports eventually gained victory by 21-8.

On the second rink, the Ladywell team of Christian Denearaz, Tracy Umney and Skip, Phil Welch, got off to a strong start, scoring five on the first two ends. And, although their opponents scored three on the next end, Ladywell held that lead until the 8th end, when their opponents scored three to go 9-8 ahead. And a further four shots on the 9th end saw the Southwark Sports team take a 13-8 lead into the break. After tea, the Ladywell team narrowed the gap to 13-10 after 11 ends, but then Southwark Sports won six successive ends to take an unassailable 28-10 lead with just one end to play. Although Ladywell salvaged some pride with a single on the last end, this left the final score at 28-11 to Southwark Sports.

So, Ladywell had lost both matches, giving Southwark Sports a convincing win.