Ladies, gentleman and South Australians, after a well over a year of trying, I have finally cracked it for one of the great pieces of numerology in the great game of lawn bowls.

In the cutthroat Friday pairs at Manning last weekend, I played with my former 5th Division skip, the Greek God Michael ‘Alphabet’, against an accomplished 1st Division skip named Wayne Sworld (Party on, Garth!) and his partner & Premier League lead Joe the Italian from South Perth, who is most definitely not Joe Dolce, the voice of the 1980 masterpiece Shaddap You Face.

So after dropping a 4 on the 1st End and being on course to lose 44-0, which was the talent gap between the pairs, the Greco-Australian pairing of Alphabet and JT fought their way back, and in something that had to be seen to be believed, just past the halfway mark, we brought the score to Satan’s favourite number…

6-6 AFTER 6 ENDS.

It was exactly what Iron Maiden prophesied 40 years ago… Six six six, THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST.

Completing one of the great numerical matches seen in the 65-year history of the MMBC, myself and Michael poured the pressure on the quality pair and led 10-7 after 9 ends, but Wayne sent the jack into the ditch to give the WJ team a 3 on the penultimate end, completing what I would describe as the BINARY SCORELINE…..

10-10 after 10 ends.

But, I can confirm this story has an almighty ending, because after being down for most of the 11th and final end and looking set to suffer the expected result, Michael had the lucky last bowl of the game, and after Joe basically gave an 85-year-old man a heart attack by drawing shot to within a foot of the jack, Michael realised there was money to be won, and after accepting my ‘feedback’, Michael found enough grass, and to the shock of everyone….

He nudged out Joe Dolce’s shot to get the hold by half a bowl’s width, winning us the game 11-10, sparking a rink invasion to rival Manchester City’s title celebrations on Sunday afternoon.

I couldn’t give two hoots if it was a Friday social game, I can actually say I’ve recorded a legitimate win against a Premier League lead and a 1st Division skip, and you can’t take it away from me.

Completing the tale, we played a team of Marg and ‘Little Joe’ in Game 2, and after landing an almighty 6 on the 1st End, we fell in a hole as the sun went down and the air got colder, dropping a 5 on the penultimate end to trail 12-13, but Michael got the shot on the final end to finish the game by a cursed 13-13 and I thought we’d lost on the ‘Ends Won’ tiebreaker, but it turned out we were actually ahead 6-5 on Ends, so we won on countback and won ourselves $15 apiece for winning both games….

Despite having a combined margin of 1 shot.