An 89-year-old Tongala lawn bowling champion has returned to the Campaspe Playing Area’s division one pennant bowls competition with immediate success to help the Bulls cement third place with one round of matches remaining before the Christmas break.
Geoff Tinning, the elder statesmen of the renowned sporting family, played lead for Matthew Liverton – skipping in the absence of Steve Hammond – on a rink that only managed a draw, but contributed to a Tongala win.
The 11-shot win of Brad Tinning was enough to ensure victory against Rich River after Glenn Fields lost his rink by two shots.
As usual there were Tinnings on every rink, Stephen and Barry lead and second for Fields, while Peter Tinning was lead on Brad Tinning’s rink and Geoff was on the remaining rink.
Tongala won the round nine match 68-59 (13-3) and now sits third, 17 pennant points ahead of fourth-ranked Deniliquin and just five points behind second placed Moama Steamers. The vastly improved Stanhope, which finished bottom last year, leads the competition with six wins from eight games. The Bulls have second from the bottom Rochester next week before a month long break.
Before Saturday’s game Geoff Tinning had played seven games as lead in division two. The family name is usually very prominent when it comes to the player’s ladder, but this year it doesn’t appear until 21st and 22nd on the list – Peter and Brad the second and third ranked Tongala bowlers after Connor Trewren (who has a 5-1 record as third to Brad Tinning this season).
Brad Tinning won only half of the opening 10 ends and trailed by a shot, before taking shot bowl on all but two of the 11 remaining ends to win 25-14.
Liverton trailed by six shots with three ends of his match remaining, having gotten out to a six-shot lead with wins on seven of the opening 13 ends. He lost the next five (along with 12 shots) and trailed by six before collecting a four and a pair of single shot ends to force a 21-all draw.
Fields was eight shots down 11 ends into his game, but with a trifecta of three-shot ends suddenly found himself all square with four ends remaining. He dropped seven shots on the next three ends, then amazingly almost pulled the game out of the fire with a five-shot final end haul – losing by two, 22-24.
- Stanhope’s amazing season continued on Saturday when it won its sixth game of the season, double its total wins from 2023-24.
Robert Armstrong was the highest ranked division one bowler for Stanhope last season, at number 58, but this year there are nine in the top 20 – four of those in the top six seeds.
Stanhope won its match with fourth-ranked Deniliquin by 22 shots, 68-46 (14-2), having beaten the same team by 10 shots in round two.
Ben Fletcher has been one of the big reasons for the improvement, having been the number one player in the Goulburn Valley Playing Area’s division one competition last year while playing with grand finalist Shepparton Golf. He finished 2023-24 with an 11-2 win/loss record and this year is on track to better that with a 7-1 return so far as skip for father Barry, veteran John Patterson and Jono Thorne.
That foursome won 29-11 on Saturday and were backed up by a six-shot Tim Hancock victory, cancelling out the two-shot loss of Greg Fitzpatrick.