Bowls: Porty crash at the hands of promotion rivals Balbardie

PORTOBELLO were only able to shine brightly on one rink and that wasn't enough to prevent them crashing to a heavy 31-shot defeat (90-59) when they clashed with Balbardie at Bathgate on Saturday in Division 1B of the national indoor bowls leagues.

Both teams have promotion aspirations so Portobello faced a tough task away from home, so defeat was no disgrace and although damaged, their mission to finish top of the league remains alive and kicking.

Elsewhere, Alloa scored a shock home win over strong promotion contenders Abbeyview to become surprise leaders of the league with six points from four games played. However Balbardie, Portobello, and the Dunfermline team all sit on their heels with four points.

"We have home advantage when we play Alloa in our next match (Saturday, November 13] so the opportunity and incentive are there for us to win and so stay in the race," said Porty team captain Robert Wood.

"Our general level of performance against Balbardie wasn't as bad as it looks as their back ends produced lots of damaging conversions although we did have one rink that was a bit out of sorts," he added.

John McDermott - the only player from Edinburgh in the junior international trial team - was in fine form to skip his rink to Portobello's only win while Andrew Caldwell, Willie McDonald, and Ian Fleming all lost. Balbardie's overall grip on the match is evident from the phase scoring with the home club dominating the first two seven-end phases, 31-19 and 38-22 respectively, then edging the third 21-18.

McDermott and his rink of Wood, Andrew Davie and George Johnston found themselves engaged in a ding-dong battle with Lawson Trotter, Mark Bonar, Jim Speirs and Walter McDougall.

Peels were called at 5-5, 11-11, 13-13, and 14-14 before a 1, 1, (1), 1, 3 finish tipped the scales in the 20-15 favour of the visitors.

Caldwell and his rink of Jamie Reid, Robert Sloan and Gordon Bold were in touch at 4-5, 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12 but four non-scoring ends on the trot brought then under 20-11 pressure and they lost 20-13 to Ian Drysdale, David Coates, Gary Orr and Sandy McDougall.

McDonald and his rink of David Brown, Scott Rogers and Euan Murray slipped from 4-5 to 4-13 with the loss of 1, 1, 3, 3 and suffered a 23-12 defeat at the hands of David Lawrie, Davie Ross, Diz Drysdale and Graeme Byrne.

Fleming won the first three ends to skip Kerr McKail, Barry Smythe and Craig McCall into a 5-0 lead but it proved to be a false promise and five ends later they were facing tough times at 14-5 down to Kenny Martin, John Gillogley, Andy Forrest and Ewan Shearer.

There was worse to come and it arrived in the shape of nightmare losses of 3, 3, 8 to trail 29-8 and Fleming and Co went on to lose 32-14.