Province Bonspiel Monday 31st January

The Province Bonspiel is always a bit of a hoot! It is run on traditional bonspiel lines although there is a modern twist. Not all clubs can raise three teams; in order to let smaller clubs still take part, they can enter at least two teams and have their results pro-rata'd using some complicated formula or other that is well beyond the arithmetical capabilities of your scribe. Is it even arithmetic? Who knows - and certainly pas moi! Anyhow, this is all a long-winded way of saying that President Niall wrote a report about a month ago that has sat on my to-do list all that time - apologies Niall! The first game of three involved Brian Fleming, Jenny Barr, Robin Copland and Mike Wood. They played Haymarket CC and found themselves 13 shots to the good by the end of their game. A great start, writes Niall.

Next up were Susan Kesley, Andrew Galloway, Joe Barry and Lois Copland. The ice had slowed up and was a bit tricky. It was all a bit tense as they went into their last end but a big score of six steadied the nerves and secured a four-shot win against a strong Stew-Mel rink.

This left the evening game in which president Niall Gunn teamed up with Jennifer Marshall, Dave Munro and Angela Downie to take on the might of Dalkeith. As often happens, their main rivals, Barbarians CC were on an adjoining sheet and their challenge was to try to keep pace with them. They were behind Barbarians in the last end so really had to go all out for a big end which, to be fair, they scored; a five took them to a 16-3 win. C & B were plus 30 in total which, divided by three meant a plus ten average score. Barbarians pipped us by one shot; they were plus eleven. Still - a great team effort and as two of our teams were plus 13, we thought that we were in with a shout at the Colin Black trophy. Even that was close though! There were in fact four teams on plus 13 but because my team had scored one more total shots than the others, that was good enough for the Colin Black trophy.

Thank you to Niall for the comprehensive report and congratulations to him, Jennifer, Dave and Angela on winning the Colin Black trophy.