It is said that the playing of the game is more important than the winning thereof (but it’s much more fun to win!) writes David Fairclough.

It was a week to recall that maxim, given that the first of the Sidmouth men’s league matches were played against strong clubs, Dawlish and ISCA (Exeter).

The County Trophy Over-60 League opened with a game against Dawlish, on the usual basis of two rinks in Sidmouth and two in Dawlish.

The overall match score was a loss of 64-89, but Sidmouth did succeed in picking up three points by way of one winning rink. The successful rink was skipped by Ron Cook, including Brian Barber, David Fairclough and Dave Lever, with a rink score of 23-18. Also, two of the three other rinks finished with very narrow margins, so the team can feel confident that they will be able to be competitive in this league as the season progresses.

This optimism was tempered by the Interclub League match against ISCA.

Again based on two rinks home and two away, all four rinks were lost with an aggregate score of 52-104. This was not a big surprise for ISCA are one of the strongest clubs in the region.

There were two mixed friendly games played with visits to Budleigh Salterton and Honiton.

The trip to Budleigh ended in an overall defeat at 48-31.

The winning rink for Sidmouth was skipped Bill Sheerman, supported by James Poole, Joan Monaghan and Jenny Fricker, and they won 22-18.

Last Sunday four mixed rinks travelled to Honiton where the side lost 99-60 and by three rinks to one.

The winning Sidmouth rink was the one skipped by Brian Smith and including Kim Wright, Chris Radburn and Connie Tolley, who won with a shot score of 21-16.