Bowls: West Lothian set up tie with East

West LOTHIAN IBC avenged their defeat in last season’s 
final of the indoor bowls Scottish Cup with a commanding 82-53 victory over Blantyre when the teams clashed in the second round at Stirling.

Having defeated Blantyre by a hard-earned 14 shots in the recent play-off final of the Premier League, it was a great team performance from West Lothian to more than double that margin and achieve it with wins on all four rinks.

Whilst the winning margin of 29 shots was a big surprise it was the accumulation of the rinks skipped by Neil Speirs, Calum Logan, Mark Allison and team captain Thomas Mann having the measure of their respective oppositions.

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“This result keeps our prospects of landing the League and Cup double alive but life doesn’t get any easier for us as East Lothian at Falkirk in this weekend’s quarter-final is yet another tough one,” said a spokesman for WL.

The opening exchanges were fought on a tightrope that produced a 22-22 share of the first seven-end phase, however, driven by strong contributions from Allison and Speirs, WL stepped up the pressure with a 30-16 capture of the second.

WL were still vulnerable to a potential fightback from 
Blantyre but Logan spiked the opposition guns with a 14-shot contribution that inspired the Livingston-based stars to a 
30-15 domination of the third and final phase.

End 16 produced a significant highlight with counts of 3 from Speirs, Logan, and Mann supported by a single from Allison giving WL a 10-0 clean sweep that saw them lead 70-40. It proved to be the killer blow.

Speirs shrugged off the shackles from H Meikle at 12-10 after 12 ends to skip Bryan Cooper, Raymond Logan and Des Hagart to a 23-12 win.

Logan was 12-6 down after 12 ends but responded with an electrifying run of 1, 1, 6, 3 to cross to 17 then he skipped James Greenock, Blair Mackie and George Sneddon to a 24-14 win over Jim McCann.

Allison picked up strongly from 10-8 with a run of 2, 2, 1, 4, 1, 1, 1 to reach 22 then conceded on the remaining four ends but held on sufficiently well to skip Paul Lynas, Stuart Johnston and Jamie Gracie to a 22-15 win over Iain McLean.

Mann was kept relatively quiet on the scoring front by the opposition rink but, in a 
low-scoring battle of only 
17 ends, did enough to skip Cameron Greer, Ian Drysdale and James Speirs to a 13-12 
victory.

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