For those of you who aren’t aware or simply don’t give a rat’s arse, tonight marks the final night of the Manning Jack Attack season for 2021, and if you ask me, it’s a HISTORIC night, because for the first time in over 4 years, the coveted Manning Jack Attack Champions Trophy, which could be nicknamed ‘Jackie’, will be presented to either the Habibs or Macatac, and the best part is that the once blank piece of polished wood has now been properly engraved to reflect the colourful history of the Greatest Social Bowls Competition Between Manning Road and the Canning River:

The unfortunate part of the engraving was that we definitely couldn’t get all the past winners on there (Ten Pin were one of them, as Peter & Coral have told us), as the records from the dark ages of 2014 to 2015 have gone missing, which probably occurred when Matty and Kate Mitchell, who started up the competition, moved down to Emu Point near Albany a few years ago.

However, among the winners myself and Half Price could find, you can see a few trends among the past ‘Champions of Challenger Avenue’:

• The Lawn Clippings were usually at their best at the end of the year, having won 2 titles in the Spring, while they’ve lost 2 Grand Finals in the Summer.
• Pirates On The Green featured Shaun, Presto and Filthy Phil, who would later form the core of the Missing Moo (Or Missing Moo’s) team that featured in Jack Attack for many years.
• We can’t remember who was in Team Can, because after their title season, they never featured in Jack Attack again.
• My glory days with The Rocket, Pricey and Richard Gardner in Team Some Hope and Team Hope were both in the baking heat of February and March, which goes to show we do love a hot Wednesday night on No Hope Avenue…. Especially at No.43.
• The Bowling Stones are not the current Bowling Stones playing in the current Jack Attack season, with the Summer 2020 champions being led by the Hoggs (Brad & Cheryl).
• The Great Bowls of Fire are the only team to win both the Spring and Summer editions, a fact that will please Todd (aka Kochie) to no end.

The other big change for tonight is that after successfully keeping it under wraps for 3 months, we’ll be announcing the first official winner of the Mitchell Trophy for the Best & Fairest Player, a trophy named in honour of Matthew and Kate for doing the donkey work with Manning Jack Attack some 7 years ago:

I can confirm that in the process of finding the past winners (That we know of), we were able to compile a list of Retrospective Mitchell Trophy Winners from thin air, and invariably the winner was from either the Champion team or the Runner-Up:

Spring 2016: ‘Loose’ Bruce Stocker (Great Bowls of Fire) – Champions

Summer 2017: ‘Filthy’ Phil (Pirates on the Green) – Champions

Spring 2017: John Duffy (Team Hope) – Lost Grand Final to Team Can

Summer 2018: Merv Roberts (Team Hope) – World’s Unluckiest Bowler, Lost Grand Final to Team Some Hope

No Spring 2018 Competition

Summer 2019: Brodie Price (Young Guns) – Lost Grand Final to Team Hope

Spring 2019: Jack Garbin (Lawn Clippings) – Champions

Summer 2020: Cheryl Breslin-Hogg (The Bowling Stones) – Champions

Spring 2020: Jason Titheradge (Trevor Chappells) – Lost Grand Final to Lawn Clippings

Summer 2021: Todd/Kochie (Great Bowls of Fire) – Champions

Some fantastic winners on that list…. And Merv.