AFTER defeating Trelewis & Treharris Bowls Club away in the same round last year, Barry Athletic were expecting a comfortable match this time, at home in the 1st round of the Carruthers Shield.

But this was not what happened.

It was a slow start by both sides across all four rinks, with the scores just in Barry’s favour, but then the visitors seem to adapt well to the excellent bowling surface and opened a lead of 17 shots by the half way mark.

The rink of Carl Best dropped 8 shots with out reply, and struggled to make any progress to be 10 shots down with just 6 ends remaining.

At the same time a dropped 5 shots on the 10th end by Captain David Wright led him to be also trailing by 8 shots.

On the end rink Rob Horgan’s quartet recovered from a 6 shot deficit after 10 ends to narrow to just 2 shots by the 15th end.

The match was still in he visitor’s favour and trailing by 19 shots after 14 ends, it looked like the Athletic were going to be the shock losers of the day.

It would require a massive turn around of form by all 4 Barry rinks to avoid a home defeat.

Captain Wright managed to get his rink to within 3 shots, but a dropped 3 on the last put the pressure back on the other three rinks.

On rink 3 Glyn Thomas finally kicked his rink into action.

It had been an evenly matched contest up to the 10th end, but with Barry winning 9 of the 11 remaining ends, picking up a 15 shot gain, the home side were now within touching point of Trelewis. Rob Horgan’s rink 5 also battled back to lose by just 1 shot.

In Carruthers matches teams need to finish strongly, and Barry picked up an impressive 8 shots on the 20th end.

With just the Carl Best rink to finish their match, Barry had somehow escaped from the jaws of defeat to actually lead by 3 shots.

The question was - could the final rink hold their nerve and avoid dropping 3 shots?

But again things didn’t go to plan and with just one bowl remaining the visiting skip had the opportunity to add to the 2 shots they held to win the tie.

Fortunately the bowl was slightly wayward and the Athletic had won by the narrowest margin of 1 shot. Final Score Barry Athletic 80 Trelewis & Treharris 79

After the match Barry captain David Wright praised both teams for their performances, and he said they looked forward to competing against Welsh Bowls legend John Price and his Aberavon team in the next round on July 6th.