BCGBA Champion of Champions qualifiers

Bowling News

The end-of-season BCGBA competition is the Champion of Champions title with 32 winners of competitions run through the season who qualify to compete in the straight knock-out Champion of Champions. This year the event will once again be held at Monk Sports in Warrington on Saturday 30 September. The Ladies Champion of Champions competition is to be held the following day, Sunday 1 October.

Below is the full list of competitions where the winners are automatically included in the draw for the Champion of Champions competition. Half of the 32 places are taken by the 16 Merit winners from the counties in membership. The rest come from a variety of competitions, some historical, some based on prize money and some more making up the numbers.

As well as the Yorkshire Merit winner there are another four winners from Yorkshire competitions that qualify for the end-of-season climax to the season. They are the Brighouse Classic, Hillcrest Classic, Pudsey Classic and Spen Masters whilst there are two more on the Reserve List. Sometimes event winners are not available to compete in the Champion of Champions or where a bowler has won more than one title so a reserve is selected from the winner of the next competition on the Reserve List. It would take a long series of withdrawals to enable the Gambart Baines winner to put in an appearance but they are on the list.

Simon Coupe won the BCGBA Senior Merit on Sunday, one of the qualifying competitions for the end-of-season climax event. As Simon had already qualified through winning the North Lancs & Fylde Merit that means that at least one of the reserves will be needed. There may be more before the season ends.

I am very grateful to Dave Parkin for constructing and sharing the comprehensive and colour-coded record below of the current state of the Men's Champion-of-Champions qualifiers.

This is not the draw order

Coming soon: the qualifying records for the BCGBA Ladies Champion of Champions