Bowling News
Whilst the Yorkshire team was beating Warwick & Worcester in the Semi-Finals of the BCGBA Senior County competition, Lancashire and Shropshire met in the other Sem-Final where things appear to have got a little out of hand.
Anyone who follows social media on crown green bowling will have read about an incident at the Lancashire v Shropshire match at Garswood Hall BC in Wigan on Sunday. This was in the semi-finals of the BCGBA Senior County competition where a Lancashire bowler was expelled from the match for smoking on the green and the score recorded 21-6 to the Shropshire opponent. This seems to have created a lot of ill-will between the teams as explained by over 300 different viewpoints posted on various social media sites.
Rather than reproduce any of the bickering details I include only the posting made by match referee, Jon Edmondson, who says:
Only three people actually know what happened yesterday at Garswood Hall, myself, Andrew Judson and John Crossley. Various players have commented on certain threads on what they think happened, (I'm presuming this helps make them look important), however, most of it is incorrect. For example, Michael Beer's comments are about as credible as Amber Heards were in the Johnny Depp trial. They hold absolutely no merit whatsoever! What his comments have done is totally ruin my integrity as a person and my reputation as a Referee because it doesn't matter that he doesn't know the facts, some people may actually believe him!! BTW Michael actually came up to me at the end of the match and shook my hand saying I had done a great job considering what had happened and then slanders me on social media!
I tried my best to keep John Crossley on the green, I did not want to send him off in the name of sportsmanship. I tried to persuade Andrew to allow a warning because I knew what would happen in the aftermath, not just at Garswood, but I knew it would affect the game at Sinclair too!
Andrew insisted that I enforce the rule (which he was entitled to do) and send John off. Despite what other people say, this is NOT Andrew's fault, whilst not being in the name of sportsmanship he was entitled to do what he did.
Had I seen the incident with my own eyes I would have applied the rule myself, but because I didn't see it I asked John and to his credit, he told me the truth.
Lancashire then launched a counter appeal regarding Andrew's shorts some 30+ mins after the sending off to which I dealt with and found his attire to be perfectly legal.
With regards to comments concerning verbal abuse towards Andrew after the incident, all that I could hear was what we call banter, however only Andrew can clear that up as banter affects people differently.
I also had a conversation with Neil Bithel as he was preparing to stop the match altogether. It was me that persuaded him to finish the match, it was me that told him to remember the other 12 players at Sinclair that were slogging their guts out! I kept that match going and now find myself being thrown to the wolves. For all you county players that I have Refereed for, do you all remember the talks I gave to you before you start the match? I'm the only referee that says what I say and because of this incident, from hereon in, I've absolutely no doubt that Referees are going to clamp down on everything now. I gave you a long piece of rope and you've finally hung yourself with it!
Next Sunday will be the final time that I wear the Referee uniform, and this season will be the final season I play the sport. Some of the comments have broken a part of me that can never be fixed and the love I had for the game for nearly 40 years has gone.
The match score at Garswood Hall was Lancashire 192-225 and then combined with the match result from the Shropshire home venue saw them win through 454-390. Shropshire will now face Yorkshire in the final on Sunday 4 September.