Bowls: West Lothian bounce back with interest

A pleasing aspect for team manager Colin Stein was that last season's section champions produced wins on five of the six rinks to make it an encouraging response to their previous defeat from Midlothian. The only downside for Stein came with the third defeat in a row for the rink skipped by Gary Smith.

Whilst the result on away territory is a good one, there was a period of concern when Fife reduced a 32-shot deficit down to six, however, West Lothian produced a spectacular response with 10-4 and 16-1 counts at the next two ends to go 27 up.

"We had suddenly found ourselves coming under growing pressure from a home side rally, however, we weathered that storm and quite frankly accelerated out of trouble in astonishing fashion," reflected Scotland cap Grant Logan later.

Logan was a major contributor to the West Lothian triumph along with fellow winning skips John Aitken, Raymond Logan, Thomas Mann and Neil Speirs.

West Lothian made an encouraging start on an away green to capture the first seven-end phase 43-32 then turned up the heat on the home side with a 49-34 success on the second before finishing with a 47-39 return on the third.

Aitken trailed 9-3 after eight ends to James Forbes but recovered brilliantly to skip Bryan Cooper ,Kenny Black and Calum Logan to a 25-11 win that was the highest of the match.

Logan (Grant) slipped from 7-0 up to 10-7 down then recovered with a five-end blitz to lead 21-10 and went on to skip Mark Allison, Andrew Dunnett and Blair Mackie to a 31-18 win over Andrew Pearson.

Logan (Raymond) skipped Ewan Shearer, Greg Logan and Steven Fleming to a 27-16 win over Dave Comrie while Mann skipped Frazer Muirhead, Walter McDougall and Alec Allan to a 24-19 triumph over Wayne Hogg.

Speirs battled to skip Steven Forrest, James Speirs Jun and Sandy McDougall to a 19-17 win over C Young but Smith and his rink of Stewart McMaster, Gary Orr and George Sneddon suffered a 24-13 defeat from Gary Mackie.