Bowls team wins national title

Glen Newton, Nick Wingfield and Shaun Godfrey clinched the Bowls England Men’s National Triples Championship, sponsored by PFL Club Furniture.

“It was absolutely amazing,” said skip Godfrey, who admitted he didn’t sleep the night after the triumph as he was still buzzing from the excitement of it all. “It’s the pinnacle of your career.”

Nobody can say they didn’t earn it because the White Rock trio played 14 matches in the competition, eight of them in the county stages and six more in the national finals at Beach House Park, Worthing.

White Rock actually lost the county final against a triple from Eastbourne BC when Wingfield forgot his woods, but Godfrey said they went into the nationals really fancying their chances and feeling that “we were going to win”.

Playing as Sussex A at the nationals, White Rock won two matches last Thursday and two more on Friday to book their place in the semi-finals on Saturday morning.

There they produced a tremendous fightback to recover from 18-10 down to win 19-18 against Hampshire A (Chris Cranham, Jim Marsland and Leo May, Cove BC).

Spurred on by that improbable victory, White Rock proceeded to beat Wiltshire A (James Nobbs, Neil Smith and Gary Morphet, Wootton Bassett BC) 25-10 in the final on Saturday afternoon.

Godfrey, the greenkeeper at White Rock, Wingfield and Newton will collect their prizes at the Bowls England dinner in Coventry and represent England at the British Isles Championship in Ireland next year.

Long-standing White Rock player Keith Cheetham, who selects the club’s competitive sides, reckoned it’s the club’s first national title for more than half-a-century.

See Friday’s Hastings Observer for the full article.