Published: Thursday, 4th February, 2010 3:24pm

Western narrowly defeated in Junior finals

The Western Juniors side who were narrowly defeated in the All Ireland final on Saturday in Ardboe.

ORIEL 31 WESTERN 24

Jean Parkinson Western's Zone convener praised her young team after they were narrowly defeated in Saturday's All Ireland final held in Ardboe County Tyrone.

Jean said 'the juniors done Western proud and deserve credit in putting on a superb performance in reaching the final and coming so close to lifting the coveted title.

The semi-finals and final produced a standard of bowling which the senior zone teams, both ladies and men, would have been very satisfied with. Very seldom were their any 'weighted' bowls and as the game of bowls is supposed to be played the art of drawing to the jack was always the object.

In the semi-final Western were drawn against a very young Larne side and had little difficulty in defeating them 32 shots to 22.

The scores in this semi-final was as follows showing skips names only:

Western Trevor Brian 13 Larne A Thomas 9

Western Russell Bell 9 Larne S Witherspoon 8

Western Matthew Burleigh 10 Larne S Beggs 6.

In the other semi Oriel had no problems in their encounter with Foyle, in the end booking their final place by an impressive 40 shots to 18.

After a short break and some welcome refreshments the scene was set for the final of the 2010 Junior all Ireland final and a close encounter anticipated by the large crowd of supporters present ,mostly from Oriel zone it must be said.

Russell Bell's Western rink quickly found themselves under severe pressure against a strong Oriel rink and after the third end in which they dropped a four were trailing by seven shots to one. In the fourth end the Western rink collected a four to get back into the game and after some brilliant team bowls in the fifth end Russell's rink chalked up the 'lift of the day' with a very much needed and welcome seven shots to go four shots ahead.

Unfortunately for the Western rink it was to be their last score and with the Oriel opposition taking over control of the remainder of the game they ended on a 14 shots to 11 victory.

Trevor Brian's Western rink were drawn against Colum Cumiskey's Oriel rink and in an end to end game just lost out by a single shot. The fact that at three periods of this game the scores were locked really showed the closeness of this result.

In the remaining game of the final Matthew Burleigh's Western rink found themselves trailing by three shots after the third end and never really recovered against a very strong Oriel rink skipped by Niall Hand. Although Matthew's rink collected a three in the last end it was all too late with the Oriel rink claiming victory by 9 shots to 6.

Although disappointed in not collecting the winners trophy for the third team for Western, Matthew Burleigh the team captain proudly accepted the runners-up perpetual cup from the president of the I.I.B.A Mr Ronnie McDermott.

Overall a very creditable performance by our juniors and with nine out of the panel of 13 still eligible for next year the future looks promising.

Team: Niall Crane, Jamie Crozier, Daniel Wilson Russell Bell Skip

Stephanie Harpur, Niall Freeman, Jamie Beatty, Trevor Brian skip

Lisa McVitty, Kyle Moffitt, David McVitty, Matthew Burleigh skip.