Cons Club wins the Kirkheaton Cup Final

Veterans League

The Conservative Club won the clash of the two Kirkheaton teams in the Sub-Team KO yesterday at Broad Oak when beating their Cricket & Bowling Club neighbours. The final scoreline was 156-144 with the details in the Bowlsnet record below, along with a full match report and photoshoot.

Match Report An early unique practice session was allowed separately for both teams which isn't normally allowed in any of the League's competitions. Special circumstances prevailed in that the Cons team had played a Division 5 league match against the Broad Oak B team on the Tuesday of that week. This was clearly an unfair advantage which was countered by affording each team a 15-minute practice session for both teams prior to the start of play.

A very brown and fast green which was classified as 'very tricky' by the Veterans League President, Richard Armitage, in his end-of-match summary. It took some time for players to come to terms with the conditions with numerous incidents of the jack being thrown off. In one singles game I saw the two bowlers throw the jack off four times at one end before they were able to set a mark.

One player said to me "You just can't prepare for these sorts of conditions." He was right as well as normally these sorts of greens are only around for a couple of weeks in the season which doesn't allow much practice to attain the skills necessary to counter the speed of any green.

The three pairs games went on first and things were pretty 'nip and tuck' for most of the session with all three games taking over 90 minutes to reach a conclusion. A fast green demands that the bowler sends an under-pumped wood which takes forever to come to rest. At one end I saw a wood overtake his opponents previous bowl which was still wriggling and staggering like a drunk trying to find his way home after a long session.

Things remained very close in all three pairs games before ending with the Cons team having recovered the four-point handicap difference and added a further four-point lead to hand over to their singles teammates.

Mark Berry is a bowler who plays for both clubs in different competitions. The Cons team were pleased that his loyalties lay with them in the Veterans League, especially when he established a 7-1 lead in his game against Richard Taylor. That lead was diminished and passed as Richard hit a form hotspot mid-game to take a 14-12 lead. Mark fought back take the game 21-16 and the first bowlers are back in the clubhouse with the Cons overall lead extended to 9 points.

The meeting of the two Stuarts/Stewarts saw the Cons man dash into a 9-1 lead and then take that to another level accelerating to a 19-2 lead and what seemed a formality in taking the aggregate total target out of reach of the Cricket Club. But the Cricket Club captain hadn't given up and with a new mark took control before succumbing to the inevitable, but not before the score had been pegged back to 10-21. That kept the Cricket Club very much still in the match with the final two games still on the green.

The Cricket Club hopes were raised again as their man David Kilner took control of his game against Giles Massey although the gap was never game-ending although David led almost all the way until pushing ahead from 13-14 to conclude the business and reignite hopes of a revival.

Steve Mitchell and Tony Dawson were the last two bowlers to leave the green with Tony leading most of the way. Certainly, in my opinion, this was the highest quality game of the match, with repeated first marks rubbed out by identical woods, only for a carbon copy of the first wood recovering the situation again. Both bowlers contributed to a fascinating game and it was a pity that the final outcome was immaterial to the full result long before they had reached the All-But-Across call.

Inevitably the focus is on the winning team on such occasions but the contribution of the losing Cricket Club team was immense. A match played in a great spirit, a pleasure to witness and I apologise if the report is seen as biased at all but that may be because I am. I recall being a member of the Kirkheaton Con B team that won this same competition on the same green six years ago and can appreciate the effort put in by both teams and the memories they have created, which will stay with the winners and losers for a long time.

A selection of photographs from around the green. Use the side arrows to scroll through all 22 photographs.