Bowls: West Lothian trounce Turriff to reach Scottish Cup semis

West LOTHIAN IBC marched into the semi-final stages of the indoor bowls Scottish Cup with a commanding 40-shot victory (91-51) over Turriff at Dundee, and are joined by Falkirk, Stirling and Blantyre in the last four.

Turriff play their bowls in a competitive spirit but came up against a West Lothian team that is hungry to win the Cup for a record sixth time and the travellers from the Inveralmond stadium in Livingston demonstrated their appetite by dominating all three phases.

Wins on all four rinks made it an impressive clean sweep for a team which has already won the Premier League title.

Swansea, the previous weekend, had produced two emotional highs with the Fours Crown of the British Isles Championships being captured by a West Lothian rink while five members of the team were involved in Scotland winning the Home International Series.

So, tired and leg weary to travel the road and the miles to Dundee Messrs Speirs (Neil), Mann (Thomas), Greer (Cameron), Logan (Calum), Allison (Mark), Cooper (Bryan) and James Speirs might have been but their spirits remained high and their best form was sustainedtypified by team captain Thomas Mann who set an inspiring example with a terrific 14-2 input over the first seven ends. WL also benefited from an 8-1 contribution from Allison as they captured the first phase of the 21-end match 34-17 then in a 30-17 continuation Speirs and Logan provided 11-0 and 11-2 highlights respectively on the second phase.

The match lead of 30 shots gave WL a comfort zone in which to control the match and they continued to assert their authority with a 27-17 score on the third and final phase.

Calum Logan produced a great performance with the young Scotland star winning 14 of the 21 ends as he skipped James Greenock, Jamie Gracie and George Sneddon to a 27-12 win over M Thurston.

Mark Allison enjoyed a six-end purple patch spell from 9-8 to 20-8 and went on to skip Paul Lynas, Raymond Logan and Stuart Johnston to a 20-11 win over G Alexander.

Mann did run out of steam after making his explosive 14-2 start but that effort did help light the WL fuse and didn’t give up much ground as he skipped Cameron Greer, Ian Drysdale, and James Speirs to a 26-7 win over G Barclay.

Speirs went on to skip Bryan Cooper, Scott Logan, and Des Hagart to an 18-11 win over D Anderson.

Elsewhere in the Cup, Falkirk beat Ardrossan, 93-72; Stirling beat Coatbridge, 102-78; and Blantyre beat Garioch, 101-68.