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After 8 months of build-up and near-record levels of anticipation, Greatest Social Bowls Competition Between Manning Road and the Canning River is back to end 2022, and unlike this year’s Melbourne Cup, we’ve got 24 starters for this edition of Jack Attack (With a maximum of 28), and a pleasing fact is that 18 out of the 20 teams that played in the Spring Challenge are backing up in Jack Attack, with the two absences being the Bay City Rollers, who were only a floating team to make an even number, and Verse 1 were forced to withdraw during the break, thanks to injuries sustained by Mick and Peg Daly.

We won’t explain how they acquired them.

Now for the teams coming in that didn’t play in the Spring Challenge:

The Bowled Guys, the brother team to the Great Bowls of Fire, are back for another gig in Jack Attack, although Loose Bruce’s son Jamie doesn’t fit the description of a bowled guy.

Manning Jack Attack veterans Ten Pin are suiting up once again, and over the offseason Ten Pin (Peter, Deb and Coral) were added to the Jack Attack trophy (Along with last season’s champs the Great Bowls of Fire) to recognise their win in the Summer 2016 competition:

Continuing on, This Is How We Roll, sister team to Stop Drop & Bowl, are back in pursuit of the wooden spoon, while the Top Shots (Jerry, Gordon, Leslie & Irene) are back after sitting out the 3-week competition, meaning the Manning Darts will still have a team in the field after the loss of Verse 1, and as for the new teams for this season:

First up is Fawesome, who are a rebrand of Team Epic from the Summer Jack Attack, once again led by Ian ‘Stewie’ Stewart, whose timing on his late entry couldn’t have been more helpful after we briefly went down to an uneven 23 teams, and I did ask Stewie where the name Fawesome came from, and his simple answer was that his mate’s boat has the name Fawesome due to having a four-stroke outboard.

And the other new team is Macatac 2, another connection to the Como Bowling Club recruited to play by Di Macpherson, and the main Macatac team have added a 1 to their name to avoid confusion, although it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which is which, because you don’t have to look too far down the ladder to figure out where Macatac are sitting.

On another note, on Wednesday night we were without our good mate Richard ‘Half’ Price, although this time it had nothing to do with fishing, he’d simply contracted a case of the dreaded spicy cough and had to sit the week out, leaving it down to Mark Ellis and yours truly to look after proceedings.

Actually, let me rephrase that: Pricey hasn’t caught a case of the spicy cough, the spicy cough has caught a case of Pricey.

The Overall Night

After a welcome to Jack Attack play got underway at 6:30pm, and the overall winners for the opening night were Macatac 1, 1 by name and No.1 by result, who positively smoked defending champs the Great Bowls of Fire by +15 shots (6-1, 11-1) to win the $50 cash, and I can only summise the Great Bowls of Fire are still reeling over the loss of Jerry Lee Lewis, considering they’ve only held a grand total of 2 shots since he died on October 29.

Their nerves have been shaken and their brains have been rattled.

Still, it wasn’t all bad news for Kochie and his merry men, because the Bowled Guys (Loose Bruce, Rede & Jamie) finished 2nd overall to get the $30 thanks to defeating Jack To The Drawing Board by +13 shots on Synthetic Rink 7, set up by a 10-0 shutout in the 1st Set and a comfy 5-2 win in the 2nd Set, and I wonder if Alex will take a drawing board with him on the trip down to Busselton next week, because his team will need to draw up a few ideas to dodge the Wooden Spoon this season:

Moving on, the countback system got an early workout as 3rd, 4th and 5th all finished on +12 shots, but after some rigid maths, The CDs got the nod for 3rd place 9-8 (Out of 10 ends) on the ends countback thanks to their win against the hapless Buffed Helmets 1 8-3 7-0 on Grass Rink 1, taking home the $20, and it was a win under duress from the CDs, with the team down to a trio of Helen, Nat and Nat’s brother Brett due to the absence of Kelly and Marg.

Funnily enough, Brett and Half Price are in the same punters club, and the one time Brett plays Jack Attack, Half Price is left housebound.

So 4th place and the $10 went to the Jack Hunters for their comprehensive win against Stop Drop & Bowl on Grass Rink 2 (8-3 8-1), a solid start for the Jack Hunters after the offseason name change from Beginner’s Luck, especially with team manager Helen not available, and it’s not often you lose an ends countback after holding 8/10 ends, but that’s what happens when you don’t have ‘Luck’ in your team name.

Speaking of luck, the unlucky 5th-placed team on +12 shots were The Lenny’s, who missed out for the simple fact their game went to a tiebreak, and the fact that game on Synthetic Rink 4 went to a tiebreak is a credit to Paul’s Heroes, because the Lenny’s were ahead 10-0 after 2 ends and won the 1st Set 14-1, then led 6-0 after 2 ends in the 2nd Set, and Jared was bowling so well that Paul Smith (Who plays Premier League for Manning) nearly had to sub in and take him on, but he talked himself out of it.

But, with the reputation of Mukinbudin on the line, Maddie and the team hauled themselves off the canvas and won the 2nd Set 7-6, capped off by a 4 on the final end, although The Lenny’s avoided what would’ve been a fair old choke and won the tiebreak.

I suspect Jared may be getting a visit from the handicapper this week.

Completing the results, Ten Pin came back like they’d never left Wednesday nights at Manning, coming back in the 2nd Set to force a tiebreak against the Unbelievabowls on Synthetic Rink 2 (They split the sets 1-7, 5-3), and unlike last Summer when Ten Pin wound up as the doyens of tiebreak heartbreak (They played in 4 tiebreaks and lost the lot), Peter, Deb and Coral got the win, thanks to handy bowling like this from Peter:

On Synthetic Rink 8, the Crawshaw residents produced a fair old turnaround after a stinky Spring Challenge, defeating the Bowling Stones 12-4 6-3, and team captain Wilko couldn’t have been happier with his neighbours’ performances, as Jane played consistently well all night, and Decca pulled off what Wilko described as the 6-shot save, because the Stones were holding 4 (8) on their powerplay in the 2nd Set, which would’ve blown the score out to 9-2 with an end to play, but Decca came in with his last bowl and cut it down to 1(Turned into 2), so instead of preparing for a tiebreak, Crawshaw were only down 3-2, they played their powerplay on the final end and held 2 to seal the win, and Decca had to point out the losing bowl:

“L for Love!”

Moving on, Manning Up and the Buffed Helmets II played a hard fought contest on Synthetic Rink 1, with Manning Up winning the 1st Set by a narrow 4-3 margin, but they were in immediate trouble in the 2nd Set as the Buffs II were holding 4 with a bowl to come, but unfortunately for Cheese, Carry and Kip, that bowl was from Manning Up’s Underperformance Manager John, who pulled off the improbable and trailed the jack, which was sitting right on the T:

Trav of Manning Up could be heard exclaiming “You arsey bastard!” as John walked down.

Next up, This Is How We Roll looked anything but a wooden spoon favourite on Grass Rink 4, as they defeated Rock N Bowl 7-3 8-2, and the night started with a hold of 5 on the opening end, and it simply got better from there, with this photo during a 1st Set measure summing up the night:

I think they call that the Rocky Pose.

Next up, the SPCG Spinners (On their proper Jack Attack debut) were the team drawn against Verse 1 on Synthetic Rink 6 prior to Verse 1’s withdrawal, but Fawesome’s entry gave us a straight swap on the fixture, and Stewie’s team were leading for much of the 1st Set, but somehow the Spinners from No Hope Avenue (Mum/Helen, Wags and Denise) held a 5 on the final end of the set to win the set 8-4:

But after that, everything was awesome for Fawesome, as they went to hold the last 4 ends of the 2nd Set to win it 8-1, and the tiebreak was a pretty comfortable watch, holding 3 to get the 3 points to start the season.

Another tiebreak game on the Synthetic Green featured Salty Towers against the Top Shots on Synthetic Rink 3, and Salty Towers took the 1st Set by holding 2 on their final end powerplay to win the set 6-3, but the Top Shots recovered from an early 0-4 deficit in the 2nd Set to hold 2, 4 & 2 and win the set 8-4 to send the game into a tiebreak:

But the one end shootout was nothing short of emphatic, as Salty Towers mentioned the war and held a 4 to win the game.

And the lucky last result of the night was the last game to finish on the night, the game between Macatac 2 and Shapes on Grass Rink 3, which may have been because Macatac 2 (Being new to Jack Attack) weren’t aware of the rules and kept rolling the jack back to reset the end, causing the game to run past 8 o’clock.

So the tale of the game was that the Shapes boys, possibly in relation to yours truly giving them a box of Shapes after the Spring Challenge, prepared for the game in style by bringing a box of just about every flavour of Arnott’s Shapes to get them through the night:

I’d say they should’ve started with the Pizza Shapes, because Macatac 2 won the 1st Set 11-1 (By sheer coincidence Macatac 1 also had an 11-1 set win on the night), but Craig, Peter, Tristan and Ian got the mat back in the 2nd Set and managed to eke out a 3-2 win to send the game to a tiebreak, but on a long end under the lights to make the grass as slow as buggery, the Como Bowling Club expats got a toucher early on and eventually held 2 to get the points, leaving them in the Top 10 after Week 1 of play.

So all up, a solid beginning to this edition of Manning Jack Attack, and all in all, 7 out of the 12 winners on the night were ahead by double figures on the variance, and +10 shots is enough to land you in the Top 4 on a Wednesday night…

This week it was only good for 7th!

Results

Scoring – 2 points for a set win, 1 point for a tied set, 1 for a tiebreak win, tiebreaks aren’t counted in score differential

Grass 1: CDs (4pts +12) defeated Buffed Helmets 1, 8-3 7-0

Grass 2: Jack Hunters (4pts +12) defeated Stop Drop and Bowl, 8-3 8-1

Grass 3: Macatac 2 (3pts +9) defeated Shapes (2pts -9), 11-1 2-3 2-0 in the tiebreak

Grass 4: This Is How We Roll (4pts +10) defeated Rock N Bowl, 7-3 8-2

Synthetic 1: Manning Up (4pts +5) defeated Buffed Helmets 2, 4-3 7-3

Synthetic 2: Ten Pin (3pts -4) defeated Unbelievabowls (2pts +4), 1-7 5-3 1-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 3: Salty Towers (3pts -1) defeated Top Shots (2pts +1) 3-6 8-4 4-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 4: The Lenny’s (3pts +12) defeated Paul’s Heroes (2pts -12), 14-1 6-7 1-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 5: Macatac 1 (4pts +15) defeated Great Bowls of Fire, 6-1 11-1

Synthetic 6: Fawesome (3pts +3) defeated SPCG Spinners (2pts -3), 4-8 8-1 3-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 7: Bowled Guys (4pts +13) defeated Jack to the Drawing Board, 10-0 5-2

Synthetic 8: Crawshaw CC (4pts +11) defeated Bowling Stones, 12-4 6-3

Captain’s Comments

Scotty, Buffed Helmets Captain: “Poor sport of the night goes to Carmo, leaving before the game finished because we got beaten so badly, and subseuqently trying to join the Buffed Helmets 2 on the other green, he also bowled a shot during the night and said ‘It’s going to cause mayhem’….”

“It landed 4 metres short of the jack!”

“No mayhem here, Carmo!”

Helen, CDs: “CDs finally have a great win with 2 fill ins – Marg and Kelly, your spots are in jeopardy!”

Alex, Jack To The Drawing Board: “Probably a night to forget, our opponents were nice guys and bowled well, two thirds of us bowled well, and we were lucky not to get dacked, our wooden spoon hopes are still alive.”

Wilko, CCC: “We were 4 down in a Powerplay, Decca saves the day and cuts it to 1, it was a 6 shot bowl, and Jane played fantasic bowls all night”

Naomi, The Lenny’s: “Great team to play against, friendly people with the ability to match”

Todd, Great Bowls of Fire: “No surprises that Macatac wound up first, they were rolling up for 4 hours, but on the bright side we robbed the Bowled Guys of 1st and the CDs of 2nd!”

Shapes: “Grifted by professionals”

Ladder

A few photos I couldn’t quite fit into the report

Buffed Helmets 2021 captain Scotty, probably watching Carmo fall well short of the head once again.

Todd/Kochie in action:

And a pre-game handshake between Cheese and Scratch of the Buffed Helmets: