Ladies get title defence back on track with comfortable home victory

Unfortunately the visitors could only field 12 players so each of their rinks had to forfeit a quarter of their final score.

Jennie McCready Marie Houston, Iris Millar and Barbara Cameron were pushed all the way by O Allen.

The Braid ladies made a good start and with 4 ends played they had opened up a 7 shot advantage.

The margin was still the same after 12 ends, however the visitors won the next 4 ends to close the gap to only 2 shots, but the Ballymena rink lifted a count of 5 shots on the penultimate end to eventually secure victory by 20 shots to 15 (Adjusted score 20 - 11.25)

Jean Rainey, Dorothy McKee, Pat Allen and Jennifer Dowds had an interesting game against P Barnes.

With 8 ends played the Ballymena ladies appeared to be coasting to victory, however they could only win 1 of the next 9 ends which saw the visitors turn a 9 shot deficit in to a 3 shot lead.

With the visitors set to lose a quarter of their score the Braid rink new that any sort of result on the last end would ensure that they would claim their point and they scored 2 shots to leave the final score 19-18 in favour of the visitors, however after adjusting the scores it was the Ballymena ladies who claimed the win by 18 shots to 14.25.

Linda McCullough, Barbara Burnett, Sile Garvey and Sarah Jane Coleman lost the first end against M McCullough, however they picked up 10 shots over the next 4 ends to open up a healthy lead.

The visitors however were hard to shake off and with only 3 ends remaining they had cut the lead to only 2 shots but 5 shots over the final period of the game was enough to seal a Ballymena victory by 20 shots to 13 (Adjusted score 20 – 9.75)

Megan Wilson, Kathleen Hoey, Jacqueline Jones and Liz McAuley were in superb form against E Wright.

The visitors scored 3 shots on the first end but this proved to be a false dawn as the Braid rink took total control of the game from then on. After 7 ends the Ballymena ladies lead by 3 shots however they outscored the visitors by 17 shots to 1 over the next 9 ends to lead by 19 shots with 2 ends remaining.

With victory secure the Ballymena rink conceded 4 shots over the final 2 ends, but it could not take the gloss off an excellent performance with the final score 25-10 (Adjusted score 25 – 7.5)

This Wednesday afternoon the ladies travel to Portstewart.