Bowls: Porty’s push for promotion hits setback

PORTOBELLO’S relentless drive for promotion from this season’s indoor bowls 2B league hit a setback when they suffered a disappointing defeat from Teviotdale at Hawick.

After opening their campaign with a hat-trick of victories, expectations were high that their undefeated run would be extended but a surprisingly lacklustre display was punished by an 89-60 defeat from the Borderers.

It was only Teviotdale’s second win in four but it was thoroughly deserved as they were rarely threatened and led Portobello from start to finish having peaked at 34 up before settling for a 29-shot success.

“Our performance in the main was very poor and the result is a setback to our promotion mission but I consider it to be a mysterious hiccup and don’t intend making any knee-jerk changes,” said Portobello manager Robert Wood.

The return to duty of Chris Steven, Scott Rogers and Andrew Davie gave Portobello a solid look, but their failure to fire was evident after the first seven-end phase, which they lost 30-15, then a 29-25 count on the second proved a false signal as Teviotdale turned the screw with a 30-20 success on the third.

Ian Fleming’s rink of Robert Wood, Ross Thomson and Euan Murray suffered a 36-7 hammering from Stuart Douglas while Stuart Betts and his rink of Josh Spalding, Barry Smythe and Scott Rogers trailed 25-10 at one stage before losing 25-15 to J Darling, D Reid, P Laidlaw and Stuart Bebbington.

David Brown’s rink of Dean Mackintosh, BJ Smith and George Johnstone slipped to a 17-16 defeat from Chris McDougal but Andrew Caldwell brought a degree of respite to skip Jamie Reid, Andrew Davie and Chris Steven to a commanding 22-11 win over Alan Brady.