Bowls: Youth helps Portobello gel as Fintry are swept away

“We delivered a formbook win but the encouraging aspect is that we did it well with success on all four rinks and an attitude that suggests our ambition to achieve promotion has strong focus within the team,” said selector Robert Wood.

Jamie Reid was a late call-off due to illness and that led to a debut call-up for 14-year-old Dean Macintosh, who came in to play lead to Andrew Caldwell. Wood added: “Dean settled quickly and gave an excellent account of himself. Dean will develop into a star of the future and Portobello is fortunate that 15-year-old Ross Thomson and 16-year-old Josh Spalding also fall into that category and both also played well.”

Wins for the rinks skipped by Caldwell, Ian Fleming, Willie McDonald and Stuart Betts did allow Portobello to pile on the shots and give a major boost to their shot margin bank.

Portobello captured the first seven-end phase 31-19, helped by an explosive 3, 4, 4 start from Caldwell then a 36-16 domination of the second was kicked off by a mighty 5 for Caldwell at the 8th end. Phase 3 included a magnificent count of 7 at end 16 for Fleming and little mercy was shown as Portobello pressed home their advantage to further punish Fintry, 45-18.

Caldwell did suffer a four-end barren spell after making a great start to skip Mackintosh, Andrew Davie and Chris Steven into a 22-2 lead after 10-ends but was soon back on track to triumph 34-10 over D Buchanan.

Fleming will never be a chip off the old block but the late JS would be chuffed that his son had the bite and inspirational qualities to skip Wood, Thomson and the returning Scott Rogers to a thumping 35-8 win over A Watson.

Betts did his thing for Portobello a different way round as he stood 13-2 down before rescuing his sinking ship with a 1, 6 replay that then inspired him to skip Spalding, Barry Smythe and Gordon Bold to a 23-18 win over S Whitton.

McDonald battled on from 13-13 to skip Daniel Gormley, BJ Smith and David Brown to a 20-17 win over A Strang.