result of match played against swanspool away on thursday 7th March 2024
On Thursday 7th March, 2024, we played an ‘away’ match at Swanspool in Wellingborough, who chose to play 16 ends.
Unlike our previous away match there was nothing heavy or slow about the Swanspool mats – on the contrary they were super-fast, with ripples and bumps also to further the difficulty of playing on them. This was not exactly unexpected, but both Saxons teams found it almost impossible to keep any of their woods on the playing surface, never mind getting anywhere near the jack.
To be entirely honest, even the Swanspool teams had trouble playing on their mats, running long or off the side of them almost as much as we did!
Which is why on one memorable end there were, in fact, only 3 (yes, three) woods left on the mat, the other 13 all having come off, or been taken off for one reason or another. So although Saxons gave them little opposition Swanspool were fortunately averaging ‘only’ two or three shots each end.
On mat 1, Saxons ‘A’ team had a nightmare game, losing the first 11 ends.
They then won two of the last five ends, with their best score of 3 in the final one. They lost their game 4 - 35
Saxons ‘B’ on mat 2 didn’t fare much better at first, losing the first nine ends. There was some light relief given to us by the opposition number 2 & 3 players seemingly being unsure of how many ends had been played, despite holding the scorecard, and then being unable to add up the shots scored accurately, leading to some discussion until it was pointed out to them that 1, and 1, and 5 made 7, not 8! We did by some miracle win five of the remaining seven ends, with our best score of 4 in the last one, but still finished the game losing by 10 – 20.
Saxon ‘A’ lost by 4 - 35
Saxon ‘B’ lost by 10 - 20
Saxons lost overall then, 14 to 55
Team A: Linda Gill, Ann Cook, Chris Selling, Roger Bond
Team B: Anna Davies, Tony Sellick, Kathy Marshall, David Hill