John Ash Trophy Winners

Salisbury BC winners, Fordingbridge runners up

Saturday

The four combatants from Castletown BC, Fordingbridge BC, Salisbury BC and Wilton BC assembled for the “round robins of 6 ends each.

The first round saw Fordingbridge secure a convincing win on both rinks against Castletown and Salisbury secure wins on two rinks against Wilton - albeit less convincing.

The second round saw Wilton secure wins on two rinks against Castletown and Salisbury edge past Fordingbridge by one shot on one rink and a slightly better win on the other rink.

And so it was off to lunch - our thanks to Diane Makepeace for organising the food and to Ness Williams and Anne & Allan Wilson for sorting out all the setting up and clearing away at the end.

The final session started earlier than expected as lunch had been consumed and all were ready to proceed; this saw a crunch match between Wilton and Fordingbridge - the winner likely to be a finalist, unless Salisbury had a disaster. As it happened, Salisbury had a comfortable win against Castletown and so were through to the final. Jordan Moody’s rink did the damage with a convincing win over Mike Crane & co, and Nick Cavill’s rink completed the win over Ros Corke’s rink although a much closer game.

Thank you to Ros and Diane for all they did behind the scenes and managing the bar.

Sunday

So it was down to the final and as fate would have it the rinks where playing the opposite team to those faced on Saturday, with the exception of Jordan Moody who was playing in the Egham at Desborough. Nick Cavill’s rink comprising of himself, Mark Curtis, Alan Webb and Christina Bundy played against Fraser Boynton, Neil Gillespie, Anne Selby and Rnnmey Denning; the other rink had Fordingbridge’s Gwyn Willians, Graham Bailey, Pat Allington and Richard Hindley playing against Ashley Plumb, Graham House, Doreen Hillier and David Wressell from Salisbury.

Both Salisbury rinks got of to a decent lead and at the halfway point they were 9-3 and 12-3 ahead; Gwyn’s rink pulled back to 8-9 down after 12 ends and drew level at 12-12 after the 17th end; so a one end shoot out, which Salisbury managed to snatch by 1 shot. On the other rink it continued to be nip and tuck for 4 ends before Fordingbridge strung together a run of 5 winning ends - sadly for them Salisbury kept it to mostly 1’s and so managed to hang on the their lead. The overall winners were Salisbury.

Once again thank you to all the supporters who sacrificed the Sunday morning to support the event and to Lorraine Moody for managing the bar and the behind the scenes operations.