Bowls: Bell encouraged despite 12-shot defeat for Bainfield

“We trailed from start to finish but were always in contention. I am encouraged by the effort put in by the lads on a carpet that wasn’t familiar to them,” said manager John Bell.

Robert Marshall produced a dazzling performance to skip his rink to a double figure win that kept Bainfield in the picture but his was the only success story with Paul O’Donnell, Colin Hutchison, and Gavin Smith all losing.

Falkirk stole a march on the first 7-end phase making their confidence on the home carpet tell to the tune of a 34-22 domination and the 12-shot lead served them well as Bainfield edged the second phase 28-26 and were only edged out 28-26 on the third. Marshall burst on the scene with a run of 2, 6, 3 to skip Neil Watson, John Kidd and John McDermott into an 11-2 lead and later counts of  4 and 3 helped him contribute a 29-15 victory over Gary Flynn.

O’Donnell and his front-three of Craig Moss (capt), Stuart Patterson, and Stevie McLeod trailed 14-4 after 11-ends but thanks to a strong 2, 1, 1, 3 finish only went down to a 20-17 defeat by Jim McHutchison.

Hutchison and his rink of Daniel Gormley Paul Millar and Craig Paterson were 15-8 down after 13-ends but rallied boldly with a 4 then a single  before eventually losing  25-14 to Falkirk big gun Simon Thomson.

The rink of Craig Downie, Stephen Pringle, Alan Brown and Gavin Smith were 23-7 down after end 14. But Smith and Co did show a flash of form with a purple patch spell of 3, 2, 2, 1 to close to 23-15 but it all came too late to prevent a  damaging 28-16 defeat from Jim Cochrane.