Littlemoor's amazing season continued this week with Graham Tudor and John Allan winning the Pairs final at St Andrews.

Up first against Congs skipper Dave Hirst, and with a 25 point advantage on the handicaps, Graham Tudor was quickly off the mark. Invariably being left with a starting shot, he took full advantage of the fact that the opposite was the case for his opponent. Dave was up first in last week's Team KO final for Congs and did struggle with the table then. It somehow does seem to be playing differently to how it did last season. The balls were often drawn to the cushions, for at least the first 30 minutes. This didn't seem to trouble Graham as much and he was often able to fashion a scoring shot from just a few quite difficult starts. A handful of good pot reds, by Graham, definitely helped him to his significant 201-153 win.

Playing up to 400, meant that, with the handicaps added, John was starting on 231, whereas Mick Hirst started on just 198. So, Mick faced an uphill battle in conceding 33 to a player from whom he would normally be receiving a start of 15. On a good number of occasions, Mick seemed to be getting the same luck with the starting positions that had befallen his brother! John did play pretty well though, scoring 10's and an occasional 20 points at quite a few of his visits and with only minimal responses from Mick. John's more regular scoring simply increased the gap, which at one stage reached 90 plus. Mick continued to scrap for every point, and did look to be making some progress at one stage, but in the end his determined efforts were futile, as John ran out the comfy 400-313 winner.  Congratulations to Graham and John.

This coming Thursday will see the Individual Merit semi-finals, which will both be played at St Andrews, where Neil Lee will face Richard Bowes and John Bedford will play Dave Hirst... Hopefully, Dave will find the table being a little kinder to him than it has been in the last couple of weeks... "Third time lucky, Dave?" Anyhow, the very best of luck to all the four of you.

The final will be played at Littlemoor on the prize presentation evening; and although it's currently scheduled for Thursday the 22nd May 2025, this may need to be changed to Friday the 23rd. The reason for this is that the crown green bowling at Littlemoor has increased in popularity, to the point where the only available evening most weeks now seems to be Friday. I will post something to Facebook and to the WhatsApp group if the presentation evening date is changed.

David Howarth

League Secretary