CONTRIBUTIONS FOR FUTURE NEWSLETTERS SHOULD BE SENT TO OUR EDITOR: TONY BAKER (thetonybaker@gmail.com)
DIARY DATES
1 June (Monday 6pm): Ladies v Men for Underwood Trophy / fish & chip supper to follow.
3 June (Wednesday 2pm): Ladies away to Bookham.
6 June (Saturday 2.30pm): RDML Chessington away.
7 June (Sunday 2.30pm): Woking Park away.
11 June (Thursday 2.30pm): Supreme away.
13 June (Saturday 2.30pm): Esher home.
14 June (Sunday 10am): Elmbridge Cup away.
17 June (Wednesday 2.30pm): Imber Court away.
18 June (Thursday 6pm): Surrey Men Top 4 at home to Egham.
20 June (Saturday 2.30pm): West Byfleet away.
21 June (Sunday): RDML Carshalton away.
27 June (Saturday 2.30pm): RDML Auriol home.
28 June (Sunday 2.30pm): London Welsh home.
30 June (Tuesday 2.30pm): West Byfleet Ladies home.
1 July (Wednesday 2.30pm): Horsell home.
19 July (Saturday 2pm): Charity day (fun day) on the 19th July and funds raised will go to the Wimbledon Retired Greyhound charity. Details to follow.
11 December (Friday 7pm) Music Night with These Days Rock Band.
BEGINNERS AND NEW MEMBERS (PAT COOKE)
35 people registered an interest in coming to the 5 free beginners’ sessions. This was as a result of advertisements in local magazines, posters on community noticeboards and elsewhere, and via existing members. Well done Debbie and Ann and everyone for spreading the word. 28 people turned up for at least 1 session, and 16 people have now joined. This is wonderful news.
Thank you to Sylvia and Jenny for coming out of ‘retirement’ and stepping in to add their huge amount of experience to the coaching team of Pat, Chris, Mary and Tony. Thanks also to all the ‘assistants’ – essential to giving everyone a positive experience. We know that we will all make the new members welcome and wish them many years of happy bowling at Ember.
BAR ROTA FOR JUNE (STEWART PALMER)
A reminder! It is bowls responsibility to man the bar in June. All the slots need to be filled so if you have not yet volunteered for slots, please sign up on the list by the Club noticeboard as soon as possible.
BONUS BALL (JENNY AND MALCOLM BAIRD)
The Bonus Ball second ten-week session will begin on 27 June, and members now have a chance to choose their numbers for this period. We do, however, require £10 CASH for each number chosen.
As members have to find cash for the fish and chips on Monday 1 June, maybe you could find an extra £10 and get lucky! So please bring a crisp £20 note with you on Monday.
CLUB FRIENDLIES (STEWART PALMER)
We have played 5 matches so far and level pegging on the results with two wins, two losses and one draw. Please do sign up to play games. We are very short of players for Woking Park at Woking Park on the 7th of June. Please look to see if you can play.
CLUB COMPETITIONS (MARY BAKER)
The club competition draw was made at the beginning of the month, and the draw sheets are on the notice board and on the Club website. Several matches have a play-by date of the middle of June, please check your entries and arrange matches so they are completed within the time frame please.
If you have matches in later rounds, which are not dependent on first round results, there’s nothing to stop you getting them played early. Remember, the sooner date consultations are initiated, the easier it will be to reach a suitable date.
Remember to book your rinks and markers too.
HARDY’S OF HAMPTON COURT 100 COMPETITION (JOHN LE MAIRE)
The first full round of this new competition is now underway. Is is in the name of one of our new sponsors. The draw is on the noticeboard, and everyone has been informed about the first matches which have to be played by 29 May.
There will then be 32 players left in the competition and the draw for the next round will take place on 30/31 May with the details circulated to those still in the competition and also posted on the noticeboard.
EMBER EVENING LEAGUE (KEN HOMEWOOD)
The evening league is underway. We have six teams again as we have had for the last 3 years and each team has now played 2 matches. The weather was kind to us again this year with both evenings being sunny summer evenings.
Delta has won both their matches and Charlie has lost both their matches. Alpha started off with the biggest loss 5 – 21 but recovered in the second game to register the biggest win, 30 – 12. The results will be available on the website from next month so you can see how the teams are doing by a quick visit to the website.
RACAL DECCA MIXED LEAGUE (TONY BAKER)
We have made a very poor start to the RDML with three losses and no wins. We lost our first match at home to Imber Court 35-71. A very poor performance that saw us get no points. Our next match was a Walton-on-Thames and we lost 45-50. We fared better with one match won, one lost and one draw but lost overall on shots scored so got 3 points to Walton’s 7. Our latest match was against the current champions, Ewell Village. We had a very makeshift side with some noticeable absences and last-minute substitutions due to a mix up on the start time. Thank you to everyone who played especially at such short notice. We battled hard and had one match an excellent win 23-11 but sadly lost the other two matches so went down 41-50 and got just 2 points.
EXTERNAL COMPETITIONS (TONY BAKER)
Matches notified to date are:
Nationals
For the National competitions Surrey is divided into two as it is a very big bowls county: West which includes Ember and East.
Tony Baker played was fortunate with a round 1 bye in the Champion of Champions In the Surrey West quarter final he then played against Roy Lawrence at Ember on 29 May. On a very tricky rink Tony won 21-13 and now moves into the area semi-final against an opponent still to be decided.
Beth Cartledge and Tony Baker narrowly won their first match against a team from Windlesham. However, in the next round they came up against two county bowlers from Egham. They held their own deep into the match, but circumstances conspired, and they went down eventually 15.10.
Beth Cartledge, Stewart Palmer and Mary and Tony Baker got a bye in the first round of the Mixed Fours. In the second round they played away to Woking Park on 28 May. It all turned on end 14! We were holding 5 shots which would have put us right back in the match but with his final bowl the skip crept in and we went 1 down. We did not recover!
Surrey
In the ladies Surrey Champion of Champions Helen Hill had a first-round bye and then she won against Maureen Morris from West Byfleet. She has a home match in the next round.
Tony Baker drew an England International (Charlie Souter from Southey) in the first round of the Surrey Champion of Champions. He put up a fighting performance and even had a 1 shot lead on two occasions but went down eventually, after over 30 ends, 21.15.
Stewart Palmer and Tony Baker play at Ember in the Men’s Pairs against a team from Byfleet on 15 June.
Ember fared well in the Mixed Fours with a bye in the first round. Our team (Helen Hill, Stewart Palmer, Mary and Tony Baker) plays against Mid Surrey in a match to be played by mid-July.
Northwest Surrey
In the Men’s Singles we have not fared very well. Pasquale Gizzi conceded a walk-over in his first match. Chris Axton lost his first-round match in Men’s Singles to a splendid gentleman from Addlestone VP. Despite the loss, it was an enjoyable match, and Chris asks to thank Iain Gregg for acting as marker. In the Unbadged Men’s Singles Stewart Palmer had a good home win against Peter Good from AVP. He next plays away at Byfleet.
In the Mixed Pairs Mary and Tony Baker lost away at Egham. Not a good game!
Lots of other games are to follow!
BOWLS TO SELL? (TONY BAKER)
If you have any sets of bowls, you do not want and would be interested in selling contact Tony Baker who will arrange ‘advertising’ among the members and can advise on price. Most in demand are still smaller bowls with good grips; by that it is 00, 0 and 1. Currently ‘in stock’ are one set of size 0 and one of size 1. Regrettably nobody wants very big bowls, but we have lots of available sets!dy wants size 4 bowls, but we have lots of available sets!
Take a look at these websites to keep up to date with bowls at county and national levels.
www.bowlsengland.com
www.surreycountybowls.co.uk
www.ladiesbowlssurrey.co.uk
