BOW Short Mat Bowls Club signed off the 2025/26 season with an invitation triples tournament in the village hall.

Twelve teams from across Devon arrived at Bow Village Hall early on Saturday morning for the competition.

Teams came from Ottery in the east to Totnes in the south and Yarnscombe to the north. Bow also had a team playing while Nick Wyatt, Bow’s Devon County player oversaw proceedings during the day.

It’s worth noting that the youngest player during the day was just seven years old. Maybe that disproves the perception of the stereotypical bowls player?

Before starting, players fuelled up on bacon baps and coffee with the village hall catering team keeping the players fed and watered throughout the day, also providing ploughman’s lunches.

Initially the teams were split into two groups of six teams playing a round-robin format.

Play got underway with three mats in use and six teams playing at a time.

Each game comprised 35 minutes of play or eight ends, whichever occurred first. All teams in each group played one another during the day.

At the end of the group stage scores were tallied and the top two teams from each group progressed to the final.

The winners of both groups came from Christow, one representing Christow, the other playing as the “Red Roosters”.

The final proved to be one of the most exciting and close matches of the day.

Also played over eight ends but with no time limit, the game went to the wire, and beyond.

Christow took an early lead in the first few ends but by midway through the “Red Roosters” had clawed it back to level pegging.

Christow made a second surge and going into the eighth and final end had what looked to be a near impossible situation for the Red Roosters to recover from. Christow held a lead of nine to four with the Red Roosters needing all their bowls to score to win.

With one bowl to play, the Red Roosters were holding a four-shot lead, still one short to draw and force an extra end.

Red Rooster’s Skip Steve Collins took a last roll of the dice and playing a superb final shot to earn his team five shots and level the match.

The game then entered a sudden death ninth end. With just two bowls remaining in the game the Red Roosters were holding a strong position, it looked like they were going to overhaul their Christow teammates.

Having failed to improve the situation with the first of his two bowls, the pressure was on Christow’s Skip Sean Woodley to save the match with his remaining bowl.

Sean played a blinder to leave his bowl sitting as shot on the jack.

The pressure switched to Steve Collins with the final bowl of the game to recover the lead for the Red Roosters.

It was a great attempt but fell short leaving Christow with the narrowest of wins against their clubmates and be crowned tournament champions.