Dunbarton A 79 v Portrush A 80. The Dunbarton A team completely blew their Irish Senior Cup hopes on Saturday when they very disappointingly lost by a shot to Portrush at home.

In truth this was a poor performance by the locals who are normally almost unbeatable at home. But simply too many players had off days. Yet remarkably, the game was decided on the last bowl of the day as Portrush skip Ian McClure removed one of the four lying Dunbarton shots out of the head to win the game by the narrowest margin possible.

For some reason the hosts started slowly and none of the home rinks registered a score on the first end. And not once in the entire game did they ever get their noes in front. At one stage they actually trailed by 27 shots but to their credit they showed fight and slowly eroded their deficit. With just Marty Trainor's rink left on, Portrush led by nine and with only three ends left, it looked a forlorn hope for the hosts. However, one thing the Gilford men can never be accused of is giving up and when the locals scored a single and four, suddenly the deficit was just four shots with one end remaining.

Lead Richie and second Kieran played an excellent final end and suddenly the hosts lay four shots, only for a strike by the Portrush third to cut the shots down to one. However that was not the end of the drama. Home third Aaron O'Keefe drew a fine second shot and his opponent was too heavy with his last bowl.

Skip Marty then drew number three and when his opponent drove and missed, suddenly, Marty had over a yard to draw fourth shot to lie a tie and put enormous pressure on his adversary. Sure enough Marty produced an excellent delivery close to the jack, to lie four shots and the locals were one bowl away from levelling the scores and all four rinks going back onto the green for one end.

But it was agony for the hosts when skip McClure drove and caught the very edge of Marty's last bowl and just got enough of it to remove it from the head and win the game by a shot. Half an inch wider and it was a count of four and even stevens – a sickening way to lose an Irish Cup semi final.

Alan Paul who was outstanding all day led his rink to an excellent 10-shot win, while Barry Browne recovered from an early ten shot deficit to win by three. Marty Trainor battled back from an 11-shot arrears at one stage to lose by three but the real damage was done on Jack A Moffett's rink who lost by 11. Frustratingly, Jack's four lay three separate counts of five in the run in but the North Coast skip who was impressive all afternoon, changed all three heads with his last bowl to lie 2,2,1. Even just one of these counts would have been enough to see the hosts home.

This was an incredibly disappointing afternoon for the Gilford side who just did not produce their normal A game on the day and have only themselves to blame.

Rink 1 R McMullan, K Trainor, A O'Keefe, M Trainor down 17-20

Rink 2 D Jordan, J Moffett, C McCartan, A Paul up 24-14

Rink 3 J Kidd, A Hughes, M Greenfield, B Browne up 21-18

Rink 4 R McElroy, G McElroy, DJ Wilson, JA Moffett down 17-28