Bowls: Midlothian keep the heat on East

Bainfield returned home licking their wounds after a 69-58 defeat at the hands of Midlothian in yesterday’s East B Section of the Seniors National Bowls League at Dalkeith.

In a disappointing day for the Edinburgh clubs, Portobello continued to struggle and suffered their third defeat in a row when going down 68-58 on their visit to Hawick against Teviotdale.

East Lothian continue to be the dominating force and top the table with full points from four games after producing another impressive display to beat Balbardie 74-56 at Bathgate while West Lothian got off the mark at the fourth time of asking with a 67-47 win over Tweedbank at Livingston.

Midlothian have emerged the main threat to East Lothian having now won three and drawn one to be just one point off the pace but they were hard pushed to get the better of a Bainfield team that competed well on three of the four rinks.

“Bainfield asked plenty questions off us so it is pleasing that we came up with enough answers to win the points that keep us in the race to qualify for the knockout stage,” said Midlothian selector Lindsay Plenderleith.

The phase scoring saw Midlothian win the first seven ends 26-17 and the second 30-28 then, with an 11-shot cushion, added five more (13-8), on the short run-in to the 17-end completion.

Bainfield did compete, though, and by ends nine and ten were doing well enough to have their nose in front by four shots but failed to sustain that level of challenge due to a major hiccup on one rink.

Billy Dunn was the leading light for Midlothian as he skipped Adam Grant, John Connolly and Bill McLelland to an inspiring 21-8 triumph over Tam Seggie winning 11 of the 15 ends completed.

Bainfield, though, cheered one away success in Adam Brock who skipped John Pryde, Jim Piercey and Tony Abernethy to a 22-18 win over Frank Gray.

Bill Herd might have added a second win for the visitors having skipped Alex Hunter, Ian Combe and Jack McVey into leads of 11-5 and 12-9 but settled for a peel when losing a 3 at the last to Stan Bernard, George Blaikie, Derek Lothian and Sean Holmes while Alex Cox skipped Hugh Christie, Jock Flockhart and Watt Gilroy to an 18-11 victory over Bill Little, Les Nicolson, Irvine Kemp and Bill Kerr.