31 bowlers, many playing their first event since the long Covid lockdown, were part of Irish bowling history on the Sunday 21st November in Leisureplex Tallaght when the Rocks Jewellers Singles hosted the first competitive event in the newly refurbished and ITBA sanctioned centre with Qubica/AMF Edge String pinspotter technology.
There was a great buzz to the event, many people meeting up for the first time in over 20 months and when the lanes came on, the scoring certainly didn’t disappoint.
Leading the qualifying in the Scratch section was Chris Sloan with a 1247 (249 Avg), Sean Dempsey was close by with 1232, followed by Sarah Kebble on 1184 and Karl Dryer making up the 4 finalists with 1158. Neither semi-final matches were close with Chris going on to the final by 276 to Karl’s 183 and Sean by 236 to Sarah’s 173. The final went down to the wire with Sean striking out for 215 to draw with Chris and force a one ball roll-off to determine the winner which saw Chris strike twice to take the match after Sean struck on the first ball and got 9 with his second.
Junior bowler Sean Staines who narrowly missed qualifying for the Scratch section led Handicap qualifying with 1298 incl Hcp (230 Avg), closely followed by another junior bowler Abby McKeever on 1277, Mark Moore 1224 and Peter Murphy 1209 to complete the semi-final line-ups. Once again both semi-finals were cut-and-dried with Sean defeating Peter by 294 to 238 and Mark’s 306 to Abby’s 249. The final here was another nip and tuck match with the lead changing throughout until Mark closed the match strongly to take the win by 266 to Sean’s 243.
Congratulations to the winners Chris Sloan (Scratch Division) and Mark Moore (Handicap Division) and all the finalists.
It was great to see Lorraine, Sarah, Becky and all the Leisureplex staff who supported us so well on the day.
Full details from Event 8 will also be available on www.bowlingforall.ie on the Rocks Jewellers Tab/Results
Next Event – 5th December 2021