Unbeaten Guernsey placed second overall
THERE must be something about the European Bowls Championships that gets the best out of Guernsey’s bowlers, who won the men’s pairs title last time around in 2015 and who came close to lifting the overall team title.
Matt Solway, known as ‘The Train’, is on track to retain the pairs title along with Matt Le Ber, while the Guernsey team are sitting pretty in second place behind Scotland in the overall team table, and are handily placed in the mixed fours and women’s pairs.
Guernsey have yet to lose a game although they have ‘tied’ four of their eight fixtures so far, a relatively common occurrence in this best-of-two-sets format, in which two points are awarded for each set won.
In the mixed fours, Jackie Nicolle, Lucy Beere, Solway and Le Ber did well to beat Ireland, 10-0, 5-5, but will be a tad disappointed to have only managed to tie with Germany, 9-7, 5-6, and with Holland, 4-6, 8-4.
In two matches in the men’s pairs, Solway and Le Ber have scored 46 shots while conceding only 11 against the Isle of Man and France, but they are well aware that there will be tougher tests lying ahead of them.
As for Nicolle and Beere, they floored France, 7-4, 13-7, and did well to hold England’s Jamie-Lea Winch and Rebecca Wigfield to an 8-7, 6-12 tie, but, like Solway and Le Ber, they dropped a set against the Germans – and that could prove costly at the end of the week.
