Sidmouth ladies enjoyed a terrific result in their Foxlands inter-club meeting with Kingsbridge-based South Hams, writes Carol Smith.

This competition sees rinks play home and away and the final score resulted in a 68 to 61.5 win for Sidmouth.

Now, I hear you asking, why the half point?

Well, one of the South Hams ladies that should have been playing on her own green thought she was playing at Sidmouth.

It was decided that it was not necessarily her fault as she may not have been told of the changes and so, instead of there being eight ladies at the two venues – Sidmouth and Kingsbridge – there were nine in East Devon and seven back at South Hams!

There was some dispute as to the rules about this – after all, I do not think I have ever seen this happen before in a County League game.

After much discussion the ‘Laws of the Sport of Indoor Bowling’ were applied and the match was played as ‘three-versus-four’.

At the conclusion of the game, the three have a 25 per cent deduction to their score as they had played with the advantage of their two players playing with three woods each to make the amount of total bowls in play equal. That all led to the half point score!

It is perhaps worth pointing out that this would not have occurred if the opposition had had a home reserve or indeed could have mustered another player within the 30 minutes allowed! Phew – I do hope I have made all that clear!

Anyway, to the actual fixture itself and the action, which of course resulted in that fine Sidmouth win. Very well done to all, especially the top rink, which was the one Jan J Bates, Elaine Reed, Anita Mason and skip Zena Johnson, who won 20-14.