ON Saturday the South Pembs Short Mat Bowls Association (The Friendly League) held the first of this season’s tournaments at Heatherton Sports Park.

To start the ball rolling they had a new type of contest devised by Simon, Mark, and Steve, called Pick A Team. The idea was rather than each club having to find a set number of team members each player would enter individually and then they would ‘Pick A Team’ to play for on the day.

They had 27 entries which gave nine teams of three to play triples.

To add to the fun, Hugh and Fran from the associations management committee did a list of team names.

The teams were named The Rock & Rollers, The Hurricanes, The Woodpeckers, The Tornados, The Barbarians, The Ditch Dodgers, The Bowl Busters, The Hotshots, and The Pirates.

The tournament then followed the standard format of a round robin in the morning and a knockout in the afternoon.

Due to the number of teams entered only one team was knocked out after the round robin and that was The Ditch Dodgers.

During the break, they held a raffle and then the knockout order was picked.

After Quarter, Semi and Final rounds the runners up were The Rock & Rollers, Gareth (Kilgetty), Hugh (Hundleton) and Steve (St Johns).

The winners were The Hotshots, Fran (Lamphey), Richard (St Johns) and Anne (St Twynnells).

It was generally agreed by all who played that the tournament was a great success and should be added to the calendar as a permanent fixture.

The management committee would like to thank all those members who helped out behind the scenes during the day, with umpiring, scoring, setting out and clearing up the mats.