Guernsey let Le Quesne advantage slip away

GUERNSEY could not press home their first-leg advantage as Jersey won the Le Quesne Trophy on Saturday for the sixth successive year. The Caesareans edged ahead in the overall series 34-33 at the Beau Sejour home of the Guernsey Bowling Club, despite beginning the day trailing by seven shots after the Sarnians had won the first leg earlier this summer.

Although it was a fascinating day as the overall gap grew and closed dramatically on a couple of occasions, Jersey's strength in depth saw them to a quite comfortable victory in the end.

The leg had started promisingly for the home side as they extended their overall lead to 11 shots at the completion of the first end on each of the six rinks, but the tide was about to turn.

The visitors had soon worked out the run of the green and by the completion of three ends, they were 18-11 ahead on the day and had levelled the overall match. They were shortly to be marching into a decent lead.

The outstanding performance from Jersey's point of view was materialising on rink five.

After conceding a shot on the opening end to their Guernsey opponents, the four skipped by Gus McKinnon took total control over the next seven ends, establishing a 20-1 margin.

That advantage would be built on further in the next six ends (32-6), although the home four skipped by Don Batiste did well to limit the damage in the closing stages as they kept the final score down to 37-10.

On the other five rinks though, the matches were all fairly tight up to the halfway mark.

One of the best battles was taking place on rink one where two of Guernsey's best young talents - Matt Le Ber and Craig Dorey - were teamed up with Sid Le Maitre and skip Dave Trebert to take on an experienced Jersey four skipped by Tim Mallet.

Some of the bowls was superb; the lead changed hands on a couple of occasions early on and at 11-8 in Guernsey's favour after 13 ends, the match was still very much in the balance.

But Trebert and his team produced some special shots in a very short space of time to earn four shots on consecutive ends and at 19-8, they were virtually uncatchable.

They secured their position over the next three ends with four more shots, although the Jersey quartet finished the better, cutting the score back down to 23-13 by the finish.

It was a similar story on the neighbouring rink, which provided Guernsey with their only other rink victory of the day.

Gary Collins, Richard Marquis, Ian Merrien and skip Paul Merrien can be proud of their efforts in taking what was a close game by the scruff of the neck and establishing a 26-9 lead with three ends remaining.

The skip himself had been in inspired form, with almost everything he attempted coming off to his four's benefit.

However, in the Le Quesne, all ends are important to the overall score and the Jersey four skipped by Tim Murphy secured a vital 10 shots over the final three ends.

Over the six rinks, Guernsey conceded a total of 27 shots over the last three ends which made the final scoreline ever so slightly misleading and flattering to Jersey.

But there can be no doubting that the Caesareans - whose other rink wins came via the fours skipped by Brian Bisson, Lee Nixon and Dave Le Marquand - merited the overall victory and the Sarnians are still striving to regain the trophy for the first time since 1997.