The Summer Club Championship took place this year at the Solihull Indoor Bowls Centre on Sunday 7th July. In addition to being a championship competition in it’s own right, the event also acts as a qualifying round for the TLH Top Club finals held in Torquay, the next event being in May next year.
Fourteen clubs entered this year’s competition, including one from Worcestershire – Churchill and Blakedown Short Mat Bowls Club, with ten clubs proceeding to next year’s finals. Churchill and Blakedown have consistently qualified for the Torquay event but this year failed to do so. This was a great disappointment to the squad which consisted of – Richard Rose, Terry Clifford, Alan Walters, Trish Clifford, Sandra Felton, Dave Grove, Rob Franklin and Malcolm Saunders.
Churchill and Blakedown were drawn to play against “Magic Circle” ( West Midlands ), “Carey” ( Dorset ), and “Great Houghton” ( Northamptonshire ). In the match against Magic Circle, Richard had a great start winning his Singles match 10-7. Richard and Terry drew their pairs match 10-10, but both Fours and Triples teams lost their matches. There was no success in the matches against Carey. In the matches against Great Houghton, both the Singles and Fours lost their matches, but there was a win in the Pairs ( Dave and Alan ) by 10 shots to 9. In the triples match Trish, Sandra and Malcolm had a comfortable win by 12 shots to 4.
Overall Chuchill and Blakedown scored 74 shots with 121 against.