WELLWORTHY A 37

BRIDPORT B 33

WELLWORTHY A narrowly overcame Bridport B 37-33 at home in the final of the South Dorset President’s Cup on a baking hot day.

The match, in honour of the current South Dorset president Sheena Willis, saw two sides that had made the final by beating teams drawn from their own clubs, with Wellworthy A beating their B team 59-33 and Bridport B taking a 48-30 semi-final success over Bridport A.

In a final consisting of two games of rinks, Wellworthy just hung on to claim a 37-33 victory at the end of two highly competitive tussles.

In the contest between Wellworthy’s A Jones, B Mills, R Burnett and skip M Haylor and Bridport’s B Iverson, B Willcox, B Shortland and skip B Conisbee, the Haylor quartet had a nine-shot lead with two ends remaining but Bridport snatched five shots in the final two ends to finish just 19-15 adrift.

In the other game, Bridport’s C Taylor, B Jones, B Taylor and skip M Solomon held a four-shot advantage against Wellworthy skip D Hanger and his team-mates K Tilyard, P Stafford and C Reed with just three ends remaining.

However, Wellworthy scored a crucial five shots in the 19th end to take a 18-14 lead, which made Wellworthy’s overall position almost unassailable.

Bridport did have the satisfaction of fighting back to tie 18-18 but the cup was lost by the slim four-shot overall margin.