Ports unlucky to get just point at Dunluce

For the second week in a row, a tense, tightly contested match was played out, with Portglenone this time falling at the final hurdle and letting Dunluce creep over the finishing line first to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with a narrow 7 shot win leaving Portglenone with 1 point for their efforts.

On rink 1, Adam Hunter, Kieran Adams, Paul Grey and Roy Hunter took on the rink skipped by Barry Kane. The Dunluce rink made all the running in the opening 6 ends and opened up an 8-1 lead.

Roy fought back and by the 12th end, the game was tied at 11-11. Roy now had the momentum and pressed ahead to lead 15-12 after 16 ends, however, the last 5 ends saw the Dunluce rink outscore Roy’s rink by 5 shots resulting in a 18-16 defeat for Roy.

Stephen Young, Peter McCann, Jonathan Reid and Eamon McCann were drawn against Mervyn McKeeman on rink 2.

The Portglenone rink was the quickest out of the blocks this week and had taken an 5-2 lead in the first 5 ends. Eamon consolidated his lead over the next 5 ends and was 9-5 ahead after 10.

The Dunluce rink then began to fight back and after 15 ends had closed the gap to 13-12 in Eamon’s favour.

The game began to turn in Dunluce’s favour from here on in, with the Dunluce rink outscoring Eamon by 9 shots over the last 6 ends to take the point 23-15.

On rink 3 Mark Jones, Frankie Cassidy, Gary Merron and Keith Padgett faced Dunluce’s Uel McKeeman.

Like their opening match, Keith’s rink were slow out of the traps and found themselves 8-2 behind after 7 ends.

However, over the next 8 ends, Keith’s rink showed their fighting spirit and levelled the game at 11-11. However, the Dunluce rink were not to be undone and a series of tit-for-tat shots ensued with the Dunluce rink just nudging ahead to claim the point with a 16-13 win.

The solitary Portglenone point came on rink 4, where Mark Pearson, Andrew Millar, Aaron Foster and Chris Jones taking on the rink skipped by Rodney Kane.

This was Andrew’s debut at ‘two’ and he produced a man of the match performance. This was a high scoring encounter during the opening ends and Chris had opened up 9-6 lead after 7 ends.

By the 12th end, Chris had stretched his lead to 16-9, but 4 singles over the next 4 ends saw the Dunluce rink close to within 3 shots at 16-13.

However, Andrew Millar continued to produce the best bowls on the rink and helped his rink to see out a deserved 21-15 victory.

Portglenone can hold their heads high after another good performance and hopefully use it to build confidence ahead of their next two fixtures, both of which are at home to Coleraine in the Piggott Cup tomorrow (Wed) and Limavady in the League next Saturday.