Saturday saw us entertain Witney Town for the return game playing for the Barney Shield. We went into the game with a 14 point lead from the first game. The weather forecast was not too clever, but fortunately we had a shower for about 25 minutes prior to the game, but then it stayed fine for the remainder of the afternoon and we played in pleasant conditions. However the Captain of Witney Town said that had the game been scheduled to be played at Witney, he would have called it off. Thankfully this was not the case and we played a game of 4 rinks and 1 triple, as they had 1 player drop out from the scheduled 5 rinks and we were comprehensive winners by 110 shots to 47, thereby retaining the Barney Shield.
Rink 1 - Lead - Pete Sutton
No. 2 - Peter Wells
No. 3 - Phil French
Skip - Phil Gladden
After losing the first end by the end of the 7th end Phil's rink were 10-1 ahead and they did not ease up on the pressure, letting Witney win only 5 of the remaining 11 ends and running out convincing winners 27-9.
Rink 2 - Lead - Mick Wilkins
No. 2 - Graham Tyrrell
No. 3 - Mick Jelfs
Skip - Ted Eley
Ted's rink were 4-3 down after 5 ends but, like Phil's rink they only let Witney win 3 of the remaining 13 ends and they too ran out convincing winners 23-11.
Rink 3 - Lead - Cliff Hall
No. 2 - Pete Griffin
Skip - Chris Skidmore
Another convincing win was achieved by Chris's rink and they obviously took pity on Witney by letting them put up 5 shots on the last 3 ends, but still managed a comfortable win 25-10.
Rink 4 - Lead - Steve Clarke
No. 2 - Dave Drinkwater
No. 3 - Dave Bryant
Skip - Bryan Ogilvie
The Captains rink was even more convincing winners letting Witney win only 2 of the 18 ends and ran out winners 25-3.
Rink 5 - Lead - Yvonne Twomey
No. 2 - John Standen
No. 3 - Matk Stokes
Skip - Chris Twomey
Chris's rink were up against a slight handicap, as Chris himself decided to practice diving whilst on tour last week, the only problem was that he decided to do it on concrete rather than in the pool and as a consequence was not fully fit., however the game was still in the balance with 1 end to go as we were only 2 shots down, but unfortunately we lost the last end by 2 shots and the game 14-10.
As mentioned at the beginning, this meant that we retain the Barney Shield with an overall score of 205-128.