Bowls: East Lothian under threat again as mini-revival is halted by Falkirk

A recent run of three wins on the bounce raised Garden County hopes of reversing an earlier home defeat from Falkirk, but it was one of their own protégés, Steven Glen, that helped put them to the sword for a second time. Scott Kennedy and his rink of Lessel Middler, Gary Darling and Jamie Higgins were always up against it as the opposition to Glen, and they suffered a damaging 28-12 defeat from their former colleague.

Derek Oliver and his front three of Kieran Simants, Alan Young and team captain Graham Robertson found themselves 16-8 adrift after 10 ends and fought hard to get back on terms, but went down 24-20 to Cochrane. East Lothian did have the measure of the home team on two rinks.

Colin Cook, Jamie Gordon, Andrew Jeffrey and Billy Mellors beat Falkirk’s Simon Thomson 22-19, while Willie Wood MBE, the 74-year-old legend, skipped Mark Johnston, Stevie Thomson and Dougie Berwick to a 19-17 win over Jim McHutchison.

Midlothian notched a commanding 39-shot victory (98-59) over Coatbridge at Dalkeith that sentenced the visitors to automatic relegation having lost all their eight games to date.

Wins on all four rinks – skipped by AJ Knight, Billy Peacock, Ronnie Duncan and Colin Walker – came as a welcome boost for a team hoping to have current gold medal hero David Peacock back for the remaining two fixtures. Knight skipped Andrew Kelly, David Salkeld and David Munro into a 24-3 lead after 12 ends and they stayed on to score a 30-8 win over Gary Prunty. Peacock failed to count until a run of 3, 1, 1, 3 from the sixth end to cross 8-7, before skipping Jamie Aitken, Scott Matthews and Ian Brown to a 23-14 win over Scott McKitting.

Duncan skipped Ian Forbes, Lindsay Plenderleith and Danny McDougall to a 22-16 win over David Taggart, while Robert Campbell, Drew Pearson, Martin Wyllie and Walker won 23-21 against Robert Murphy.