Seniors put in a good effort against top team

Whitehead 80 (6 )

Lurgan hosted a very experienced Whitehead team on Tuesday night, and despite only picking up a point should be buoyed by the excellent position they put themselves in throughout the game.

With a Whitehead team hosting a raft of internationals and inter-association players, Lurgan dug deep and gave all four rinks a game keeping Whitehead insight at all times, trailing by six shots after both the first quarter and the half way point.

Lurgan had reduced this lead to only two shots with five ends to go. However a strong finish by the visitors put the final score 80-68, a creditable performance by Lurgan and a standard of bowling that should give the team confidence.

On rink 1, I Mitchell, M Bunting, J Gilliland and H Cosgrove, got off to the worst possible start which seen the first four ends shared with both teams winning two ends, but dropping two five shot ends meant Lurgan trailed 10-2 against Whitehead skip J Caldwell.

The Lurgan rink went on to win more ends than their counterparts but could never really recover from this bad start as they trailed 23-17.

On rink 2, B Boness, D Dempsey, P McGrail and skip A Briggs, kept international skip Barry Brownes’ rink insight throughout the game and going into the closing stages harboured hopes of gaining a point for Lurgan as they trailed by a two shots going into the last quarter of the game. It took some excellent bowling by the away rink to gain the shots they needed to win the rink 20-14.

On rink 3, R McCullough, J McCullough, D McCabrey and skip R.M. Montgomery came up against a rink that boasted three inter-association players lead by an inform Whitehead skip in Martin McHugh. The Lurgan four held their own for large parts of the game, however regularly they were holding shots the ability of McHugh to turn a head in his rinks favour left Lurgan wondering what they had to do to get shots on the board. To the credit they kept fighting to the end eventually losing 26-14.

On rink 4 R McClune, G Bunting, S Poots and skip A Roberts, played well from start to finish against Whitehead rink skipped by S McKinney winning 15 ends including a period of nine in a row though it took some good bowling as the Whitehead rink would not go down easily showing why they are a team fighting to win the league.

The Lurgan four though would not be deterred though winning strongly 23-11 securing Lurgan’s only point of the game.

All home matches last week were sponsored by Dawson Manufacturing & Engineering.