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After a successful launch last Wednesday, it was on to Week 2 of Manning Jack Attack, and forget about the FIFA World Cup, this is the biggest sporting event of the month, although we were faced with a few challenges this week, as several teams were left short on numbers:

All of Jack To The Drawing Board + Sharyn from Stop Drop & Bowl were in Busselton for the week, and young Alex of JTTDB was prepared to issue a walkover and give aunty Sharyn + Stop Drop & Bowl the points, thereby ruining their push to win the wooden spoon…

But we won’t settle for walkovers in Jack Attack, so Richard ‘Half’ Price sent the SOS to the Two Ronnies (Ron and Ronni) to form a fill-in team for JTTDB, while Half Price would play for Stop Drop & Bowl, a plan so serious he was rolling up at 5pm, but it turned out Ronni’s kids had tagged along, as did a few youngsters from Stop Drop & Bowl, so they had more than enough numbers to make a game of it.

Ronni and the Ring-Ins, it could be a band name, let alone a Jack Attack team name.

Then on Tuesday, Naomi from The Lenny’s tested positive, leaving them a player short, and on Wednesday afternoon teammate Jared suffered the same fate, and almost by default that meant Kelsey couldn’t play, leaving Macatac 1 staring down a walkover victory, but that was avoided when recently crowned Manning Triples Champion Adam Mac and mum Di Mac agreed to fill in for The Lenny’s against their own family, and due to the situation we allowed Macca to play with his right hand, provided he play as a lead.

Needless to say, those players that couldn’t make it on Wednesday night might get a bit of a shock seeing the scores.

On another note, another highlight of the night from a comedic standpoint was that myself and Half Price were so caught up in a few events that we somehow forgot to print off the toucher vouchers for the night, so we improvised and thought of the next best thing…

By giving people $5 cash for touching the jack.

To be honest, I think some people preferred the sight of hard currency.

The Corner To Corner

Prior to the commencement of play, it was time for the first of the Corner to Corner challenges for this season, and over the offseason the Jack Attack Committee made the executive decision to have all 24 teams on the Synthetic green, rather than have a Grass & Synthetic challenge running at the same time, a move that was simply down to costs.

So in the first CTC of the season, at least half the bowls went flying into the ditch, only 3 bowls got remotely close to finishing a metre away from the jack, while Peter from Ten Pin had the last bowl and came four inches from wicking the jack, which would’ve given him the whole shooting match, but he missed and went flying out the back.

Thus, it came down to a measure between the three bowls above, and the tape didn’t lie, it was a clear cut win to Kelly from the CD’s (The red bowl) to get the $30:

With Ryan from Paul’s Heroes (The white bowl) finishing 2nd to get the $20:

With Carolyn (aka Wags) from the SPCG Spinners an unlucky 3rd, on a day where there was No Third Dividend.

Kelly did mention to yours truly that Wednesday night was the first time she’d used the Aero Size 000’s that the club got as part of a City of South Perth grant back in 2020…

The only 000 involved in that Corner to Corner should’ve been the cops, because that was daylight robbery.

The Overall Night

Starting off with the winners, and Wednesday night featured one of the closest duels for 1st place that we’ve ever had in Manning Jack Attack, as the Bowling Stones (against SPCG Spinners) and the ring-ins representing Jack To The Drawing Board (against Stop Drop & Bowl) both:

1. Won in straight sets
2. Had +22 shots on variance
3. Held 8 ends overall

Which meant we had to go down to the fourth tiebreaker, which is the shots held tiebreaker…

And by a split lip, The Bowling Stones got the nod 26-25 to get the $50 cash!

Yes, if it hadn’t happened before it’s definitely happened now, the Bowling Stones have finished 1st Overall on a Jack Attack night (Bravo to Tiff and the team) and all told the Manning mums had a very successful night out against the Spinners of Salter Point, winning 26-4 overall (13-1, 13-3), in a game that got out of hand the moment the Stones held 5 on the opening end, followed by a 4 (8) on their 2nd Set powerplay.

On the other end, it wasn’t a good night for Wags to debut her new blue bowls that Chocco purchased this week, because there were at least two ends where the Spinners were holding shot (In one instance 4 shots) thanks to Helen or Wendy (Who both borrowed my yellow & black bowls), only for the No Hope Avenue Express to come thundering into the head and smash the jack away to the Bowling Stones.

Bloody putrid, Wags.

Still, the Spinners very nearly cost the Stones the overall win, because they wound up holding 3 on the final end of the night, set up by Wendy doing this with her two bowls:

Wonder where Wendy got those bowls from.

So that meant 2nd place and the $30 went to Jack To The Drawing Board by the barest of margins, as Ronni and the Ring Ins made the most of their cameo appearance against the depleted Stop Drop & Bowl, who all told probably needed Half Price to play as a ring-in, because JTTDB held no fewer than 4 shots on 4 out of the 10 ends (Three 4s and a 5) to set up a 25-3 win overall.

As I mentioned in the preamble, I think young Alex might be in for a shock when he sees this week’s report.

Outside of the two-horse war at the top, 3rd place overall and the $20 went to Crawshaw CC thanks to their +15 shot win against This Is How We Roll on Synthetic Rink 8, and it was a funny old game, as Crawshaw won the 1st Set 9-3 despite winning just 2 ends, but the 2nd set was a dominant 9-0 shutout to Decca, Linda, Malcolm and Michael, and that makes Crawshaw the only team to win both their games in straight sets, giving them top spot on the ladder!

Completing the money spots, 4th place and the $10 went to Buffed Helmets 2, who won in straight sets by +12 shots (12-3, 8-5) against Rock N Bowl on Synthetic Rink 5, and I’ve dug up two photos that should sum up how the game went.

Rock N Bowl get a bowl right on the jack…

And the Buffs 2, featuring Carry, Kip and ‘Coony’, nicknamed Adam by yours truly, came in and sat it out with surgical precision.

It should be noted that the Buffed Helmets 1 indirectly helped their brother team get that cash for the Buffed Helmets prize pool, because Buffs 1 managed to keep Shapes to a 4-4 draw in the 1st Set on Synthetic Rink 1, before captain Scotty lost control of his team, and the Shapes crew (Craig, Peter, Tristan and original Shapes member Pierre) went on to record a thumping 13-1 win in the 2nd Set, which meant Shapes also finished on +12 shots, but Buffs 2 getting 4 points vs 3 for Shapes gave them 4th spot.

Looking across the remaining rinks, there were a grand total of 6 tiebreaks on the night, with 2 of those games having a drawn variance.

First up, the only team to win in straight sets and not get in the money was Fawesome (Without Captain Stewie), who won in straight sets by +5 shots against the Jack Hunters on Synthetic Rink 2 in a high-scoring encounter, with Fawesome winning the 1st Set 9-5, followed by a 10-9 win in the 2nd Set, and it was almost the mother of all comebacks from the Jack Hunters, as Fawesome led 10-1 with an end to play, but Fleur deployed the powerplay and the Jack Hunters held 4 (8), just 1 shot away from sending it to a tiebreak.

Next, the feature match of the night was the Bowled Guys against the CDs on Synthetic Rink 4 (TV Rinkside), and it didn’t disappoint, as the 1st Set was decided by a monster hold of 5 to the CDs powerplay to turn a 2-5 deficit into a 12-7 win, the Bowled Guys struck back and won the 2nd Set 6-1, but the tiebreak would be decided by a lonely front bowl from Marg, leaving the CDs in 3rd overall after Week 2.

Next up was the game between Macatac 1 and the makeshift Lenny’s (More accurately The Maccers) on the ditch rink that is Grass 1, and Adam and Di Mac did what few teams have managed to do in the last 12 months, and that’s win the variance against the primary Macatac team, and all told they had the title favourites on the ropes with 2 bowls remaining in the tiebreak, but the Maccers dug themselves out of the excrement and managed to win the game in a tiebreak.

Fun fact, Adam Mac is playing in a paintballing championship in Sydney with his old work boss this weekend, and something I didn’t know until last weekend is that he’s represented Australia in paintballing in a past life, so all we can say is good luck to him.

Completing the results, the Great Bowls of Fire were banished out to Grass Rink 2 after being discombobulated by Macatac 1 last week, but Todd, Jonesy and Paul Alphabet were much more competitive this week, despite Jonesy at one stage rolling the jack out to Rink 4, which was quite the achievement considering they were playing on Rink 2:

In a tight tussle, the Great Bowls won the first set 6-2, but the Mukka Mob won the 2nd Set 9-4, to force a tiebreak, and they could’ve been forgiven for thinking that they had the tiebreak won, only to be denied by a bowl from the ‘Greek Freak’ Paul Alphabet, getting the defending champs from 24th up to 20th.

Next door on Grass Rink 3, there are 3 certainties in life; Death, Taxes, and Ten Pin playing in a tiebreak on a Wednesday night, although this time around Peter, Deb and Coral couldn’t quite get it done in the one-end shootout, losing to Salty Towers despite being 4 shots ahead on variance:

On Grass Rink 4, which had barely any light after 7pm when one of the D Green floodlights wet the bed early in the night, the Top Shots and the Unbelievabowls went to a tiebreak after splitting the sets, with the Top Shots winning the 1st Set 6-3 and the Top Shots winning the 2nd Set by a convincing 9-1, which provided Jerry, Irene, Gordon & Leslie with the momentum they needed to go on and win the tiebreak, and I did try and get a photo of the Top Shots’ winning moment, although unfortunately with that failed floodlight, it looked like this:

If you look very closely, you can see Irene & Leslie holding the winning shots.

And finally, the lucky last game to finish on Wednesday night was the game between Manning Up and Macatac 2 on Synthetic Rink 7, and there was quite literally nothing in it, as Manning Up won the 1st Set 5-4, Macatac 2 won the 2nd Set 5-4 to split the variance, and Manning Up seemed to make an inspired skip’s choice in the tiebreak as they placed Trav against Jackie Pringle from Macatac 2, and it looked for all money like Manning Up had pulled it off on the last bowl when Trav sat his second bowl no longer than a foot behind the jack to hold shot…

Only for Jackie to go for a low-percentage upshot on a short bowl, and it paid off in spades as she hit the bowl dead centre, it rolled into the head, and wound up narrowly getting the shot to give Macatac 2 the win at the very last gasp.

I couldn’t get a good look up the other end, so instead we’ll ask Maxwell Smart how much Macatac 2 won the game by:

That much.

Results

Grass 1: Macatac (3pts -1) defeated The Lenny’s (2pts +1), 2-6 7-4 1-0 in the tiebreak

Grass 2: Great Bowls of Fire (3pts -1) defeated Paul’s Heroes (2pts +1), 6-2 4-9 1-0 in the tiebreak

Grass 3: Salty Towers (3pts -4) defeated Ten Pin (2pts +4), 2-7 5-4 3-0 in the tiebreak

Grass 4: Top Shots (3pts +5) defeated Unbelievabowls (2pts -5), 3-6 9-1 2-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 1: Shapes (3pts +12) defeated Buffed Helmets 1 (1pt -12), 4-4 13-1

Synthetic 2: Fawesome (4pts +5) defeated Jack Hunters, 9-5 10-9

Synthetic 3: Bowling Stones (4pts +22) defeated SPCG Spinners, 13-1 13-3

Synthetic 4: CD’s (3pts 0) defeated Bowled Guys (2pts 0), 12-7, 1-6, 1-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 5: Buffed Helmets 2 (4pts +12) defeated Rock N Bowl, 12-3 8-5

Synthetic 6: Crawshaw CC (4pts +15) defeated This Is How We Roll, 9-3 9-0

Synthetic 7: Macatac 2 (3pts 0) defeated Manning Up (2pts 0), 4-5 5-4 1-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 8: Jack To The Drawing Board (4pts +22) defeated Stop Drop & Bowl, 11-1 14-2

Captain’s Comments

Tiffany, Bowling Stones: “It finally happened!”

Decca, Crawshaw CC: “Linda stole the show with her brilliant bowling, Malcolm and Mike weren’t far behind, and Mike noted that of course we won again, because Kym wasn’t here!”

John, Manning Up: “We thought Trav had done it, his last bowl in the tiebreak finished up 5 inches behind the jack, an acceptable length, only for Macatac to land a cracking upshot and get us on the last bowl 😬”

Anonymous: “Cheese had a real spring in his step after romantic getaway at Scratch’s farm, and after finally handing over the captaincy baton to Scotty, Carry finally let his hair down and tied one on at an 18th, he was overheard telling people he looks like Tony Mokbel with his Movember effort!”

Ladder