Brilliance of Le Ber

MARINERS INN maintained their place at the top of the league in the HSBC Guernsey Open Fours Bowls Tournament after a superb performance from skip Matt Le Ber assured them of a comfortable victory over Paul Merrien's Vultures. Le Ber's individual performance was the highlight of the day.

End after end he turned heads that lay against him into shots for his team, establishing a 10-0 lead at eight ends and a 19-9 final scoreline in favour of Steve Desperques, Lucy Beere, Neal Mollet and Le Ber.

The open rules allow the team winning an end to give the mat to the opposition to determine the length and deliver the first bowl.

The tactic enables the winning skip to deliver the last bowl with no reply and Le Ber used this last bowl to devastating effect.

Meanwhile Rebels maintained their second place with a thrilling victory over the Rabble.

Michael Merritt was again on form for the visitors, once again being ably assisted by Ian Glen, Colin Smith and Dave Lock.

The match was last to finish and attracted a large crowd of fellow players to witness the last end.

It had been an even contest throughout with John Wallis again playing a number of very important bowls, assisted by the Le Noury brothers and Peter Harris.

The last end saw Rebels leading the match by a single shot and Rebels held one in the head. Ian Glen played a good bowl taking a slight deflection to leave the shot in doubt before Wallis moved the jack back to lie two.

Merritt missed by a whisker with his final delivery and Rebels thereby took the game by 17 shots to 14, but the narrow scoreline allowed Rabble to move up to fourth on shot difference over Vultures.

Hit Men took third place after a 23-9 victory over The Good Guys.

Fran Parker and Paul Williamson at lead and second for the visitors enjoyed a very steady game and, aided by Dan Hodges and Mike Sawyers, the Clarrie Dunbar club side mixed it well with the young Guernsey Hit Men.

With two ends to go there were only four shots separating the teams, as Hit Men led 13-9.

But Hit Men secured 10 shots over the last two ends in the form of a six and a four to ensure that Will Ceillam, Shaun and Kris Bichard skipped by Dan de la Mare took the honours 23-9.

Midas crept up to sixth place behind the Vultures after securing a 23-14 win over Head Hunters thanks, largely to a healthy mid game spell which saw them take a single, a double, a treble and then a six to move from 9-10 down to 20-10 up before taking the game 23-14.