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After a week of strange weather in Perth, it was time for the halfway mark of the Spring 2022 season of Manning Jack Attack, and it’s been an eventful week for several members of our Jack Attack family:

Helen from the CDs played in the winning team in the Club Women’s Triples on Sunday (with Karina Gale and Saffrone Alden), obviously displaying experience from years of playing Triples on a Wednesday night, and I can confirm Helen didn’t display muscle memory and suggest that Karina play their powerplay at any stage of the day.

Last week I briefly mentioned Adam Macpherson was heading over to Sydney to play in the Super7s Masters paintball tournament alongside his old boss, and I can confirm it went well, as their team wound up making the finals and went down by 1 point to the No.1 team.

Not knowing the slightest thing about paintball, all I can say is well done Macca on landing a few blows on those New South Welshmen.

And, after missing last week due to being positive for the coronavirus, Jared from The Lenny’s suffered an infected jaw and spent 5 days in hospital, only being discharged on Wednesday afternoon (5 hours before play to be exact), but with his team short on players and seriously considering the prospect of the one and only Lenny Moulton playing for them, Jared fronted up, bandages and all, and played the game.

The most heroic sporting comeback since Niki Lauda turned up at Monza soaked in bandages in 1976, 6 weeks after being roasted alive in Germany.

The Overall Night

Despite the clouds looming overhead (Which explains why I couldn’t get a sunset photo), we didn’t get a return of the 18,000 lightning strikes that struck southwest WA on Tuesday night, although halfway through the 2nd Set I thought we were going to do well to finish the games as light rain started falling, but luckily it lasted all of 2 minutes and playing conditions barely changed.

Starting off the top, the runaway WINNERS for the night to get the $40 cash were the Buffed Helmets 1, who thumped Stop Drop & Bowl in straight sets by +27 shots (29-2) on Synthetic Rink 2, and I would note the Buffed Helmets 1 were down to a skeleton crew of Scotty and Kip bowling 3 bowls each, a situation brought about due to several team members going to Thailand, which also left Buffed Helmets 2 shorthanded over on the Grass, which will be detailed later.

Australian cricketers in Thailand…. This could get interesting.

2nd overall on the night went to Rock N Bowl, who got their first win of the season in straight sets by +18 shots (21-3) against the SPCG Spinners on Synthetic Rink 5, and at the moment the Spinners (Featuring the return of Sue Robbo and the debut of her cousin) could be renamed The ATMs, because they’re handing cash to everyone they play; The Bowling Stones last week, and now Rock N Bowl, who not only won but got themselves out of Wooden Spoon danger, which is exactly where the Spinners are heading.

3rd place overall went to the Bowled Guys, who delivered a +17 shot hiding on Manning Up (25-8) on Grass Rink 4, a scoreline that seems amazing when you consider that both teams won 5 ends, Manning Up were leading 4-0 after 2 ends, and won the first 2 ends of the 2nd Set…

But what did the damage for the Bowled Guys was landing a 4 their 1st Set powerplay (4th End, 1st Set), sending them from 1-4 down to 9-4 up, then some loose drives under pressure from Manning Up gave the Bowled Guys a full house of 6 to end the 1st Set (15-4), then in the 2nd Set, Bruce, Rede and Jamie went on to hold another 4 on their second powerplay, sending them from 2-2 to 10-2 before winning the set 10-4 vaulting them into the money placings.

If you do the count, with the powerplays and the hold of 6, that’s 22 shots in 3 ends – Most teams don’t even hold that many shots in 10 ends.

A come from behind belting not seen since France did it to Australia that same morning in Qatar.

4th overall and the last of the money places went to Jack To The Drawing Board, who made a comeback from Busselton after being substituted by Ronni & The Ring-Ins last week (Ronni came down to watch JTTDB play on Wednesday night), although Alex was wearing a mask after contracting a sickness of some kind during the week, and Mr Soudare couldn’t play, so aunty Sharyn got a release from Stop Drop & Bowl to play alongside Alex & Richard, and it must’ve been sweet for Sharyn to jump into a winning team, because JTTDB went on to score a straight sets +14 shot victory against last week’s overall winners on Grass Rink 3.

Half Price noted that Jack To The Drawing Board might be the first team in Manning Jack Attack history to get in the money one week, replace their entire team, and still end up in the money the next week.

Outside of the money, the feature game of the night, and just about the season, was the Macatac Melee on TV Rinkside (Synthetic Rink 4) between Macatac 1 and Macatac 2, and it’s a shame Bert Newton is no longer with us, because this game would’ve made a super time for a crossover between Family Feud and lawn bowls, and Dianne Macca noted to me that there’s a couple of ‘Divorced Pairs’ tournaments in bowls…

This game could’ve go down as the first recorded game of Divorced Triples.

In a game with plenty of quality, Macatac 1, with Duncan Macca being a nuisance, won the 1st Set 5-3 thanks to a final end powerplay hold of 2 (4), but Macatac 2, with Dianne Macca, Ellen Macca and friends, returned the favour on won the 2nd Set 6-2 thanks to a hold of 2(4) on the final end, and carried the momentum into the tiebreak to win and get the extra point, as it appeared Duncan coming off the bench to play the tiebreak didn’t quite work, as he had to spend the night in the spare room.

The last time anyone has seen that many Macs in a paragraph was in Rodney Rude’s McDonald’s sketch.

Moving on, Crawshaw CC remained on top of the ladder thanks to a tiebreak win against Shapes on Grass Rink 1, with Wilko landing the game winner with his first bowl that survived a drive from Tristan that only just missed holding shot, and Wilko made sure to chuck away his last bowl, remembering an incident from 2 years prior where he gave away a game against the Trevor Chappells by playing a bowl he didn’t need to, and in the process of winning again, Crawshaw pioneered yet another pre-game method to decide the mat, as Decca explained:

“We had the bowl roll and lost that, then we had the thong toss and lost, and now we’ve got the social card toss, and we actually won it!”

Wilko claimed it was actually a two-tailed card…. Shapes still called heads.

On Synthetic Rink 1, the Great Bowls of Fire looked like they were continuing their middling start to the season, as they only just crawled over Salty Towers 4-3 in the 1st Set thanks to a final end powerplay hold, but that 1st Set win gave Kochie, Jonesy and Alphabet all the confidence they needed to go on with the game, and the defending champions pitched a 12-0 shutout in the 2nd Set, only just missing out on the money, and they vaulted up from 20th to 13th, right in the logjam of teams chasing a Top 4 spot.

On Synthetic Rink 3, Paul’s Heroes showed what they can do when they don’t get dragged into a tiebreak, winning in straight sets against the Unbelievabowls, starting from when they picked up a 3 (6) on their final end powerplay in the 1st Set to take the 2 points 9-5, and from there the Mukka Mob held 4 out of the 5 ends in the 2nd Set to win it 6-1, securing all 4 points, firing them from 19th up to 9th on the ladder.

On Synthetic Rink 6, I reckon even Stevie Wonder could’ve seen a tiebreak coming between Ten Pin and the Top Shots, given they’d both played in 2 tiebreaks to start the season, and that’s exactly how it played out, as Ten Pin won the 1st Set 6-5, the Top Shots roared back and won the 2nd Set by a 13-1 blowout, winning the variance by +11 shots in the process, but Ten Pin, the team that have played in more tiebreaks than any team, went on to hold 2 in the one-end shootout to get the point, although the huge hit to their shot variance leaves Ten Pin hanging on to a spot in the Top 10.

On Synthetic Rink 7, the Jack Hunters got back in the winner’s circle with a straight sets win by +12 shots against This Is How We Roll, and it was a reasonably competitive game for most of the night, as This Is How We Roll won the 1st Set by a narrow 4-3 margin, it was only 2-2 after 3 ends of the second set, but the decisive moment was the Jack Hunters deploying the powerplay and holding a nice old 5 shots (Turned into 10), eventually winning the 2nd Set 13-2.

Out on the bitumen of Challenger Avenue, aka Synthetic Rink 8, The Lenny’s and the CD’s were taking a pound of flesh out of each other, with The Lenny’s winning the 1st Set 9-3 thanks to bowls like this from Kelsey:

But the CD’s gave it straight back and then some, picking up 3 holds of 4 shots in the 3rd Set (One being 2 shots on a powerplay) to send the game into a tiebreak, and 1 shot is all it takes to win a tiebreak, so the CDs decided to make it an absolute certainty by holding 5, keeping them in 3rd place on the ladder.

And finally, we get to one of the more bizzare games we’ve seen this season, as Buffed Helmets 2 (Playing with Pricey’s bowls) and Fawesome played on Grass Rink 2, and it was already bizzare for the simple fact that both teams were a player short (Which meant Fawesome were more like Twosome) so as some kind of a compromise, Decca from Crawshaw attempted to play for both teams as the pivoting 5th player, although it is Decca, so we can’t be certain he was any help for either team.

During the game, Stewie and the crew of Fawesome won the 1st Set 5-3 after holding 2 on the final end, then Carmo and the Buffs 2 used a fast start in the 2nd Set to win it 5-2, putting them ahead on variance and sending the game to a tiebreak…

Or so it would’ve been, had one un-named player (Both sides have accused the other of being the culprit) walked off early and claimed they weren’t playing the tiebreak, which led to both teams deciding not to play the tiebreak, and out of all the dumb things that happen at Manning Memorial on a Wednesday night, that has to be in the Top 25.

After some deliberation, which included going from giving neither team a point for refusing to play a tiebreak, to giving both teams half a point King Solomon style, to giving Buffed Helmets 2 the point for winning the variance, then considering giving the point to Fawesome, Half Price decided the easiest way to solve it was to flip a coin, Stewie called heads and it finished on tails, so Buffed Helmets got the point for the tiebreak, although not playing the tiebreak will come with a trade-off….

As for what that trade-off will be, you’ll find out.

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: Crawshaw CC (3pts +7) defeated Shapes (2pts -7), 14-4 2-5 1-0 in the tiebreak

Grass 2: Buffed Helmets 2 (3pts +1) defeated Fawesome (2pts -1), 3-5, 5-2, 1-0 in a coinflip after they didn’t play a tiebreak

Grass 3: Jack To The Drawing Board (4pts +14) defeated Bowling Stones, 7-1 10-2

Grass 4: Bowled Guys (4pts +17) defeated Manning Up, 15-4 10-4

Synthetic 1: Great Bowls of Fire (4pts +13) defeated Salty Towers, 4-3, 12-0

Synthetic 2: Buffed Helmets 1 (4pts +27) defeated Stop Drop & Bowl, 17-0 12-2

Synthetic 3: Paul’s Heroes (4pts +9) defeated Unbelievabowls, 9-5 6-1

Synthetic 4: Macatac 2 (3pts +2) defeated Macatac 1 (2pts -1), 3-5, 6-2, 1-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 5: Rock N Bowl (4pts +18) defeated SPCG Spinners, 14-2 7-1

Synthetic 6: Ten Pin (3pts -11) defeated Top Shots (2pts +11), 6-5 1-13 2-0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 7: Jack Hunters (4pts +12) defeated This Is How We Roll, 4-3 13-2

Synthetic 8: CD’s (3pts +3) defeated The Lenny’s (2pts -3), 3-9 12-3 5-0 in the tiebreak

Captain’s Comments

Wilko, Crawshaw CC: “Next week’s my last week before going away, the crew have taken up a collection because they claim they bowl better without me”

Alex, JTTDB: “I was stumped when I read that Week 2 newsletter, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!”

“I’m contractually obliged to thank Aunty Sharyn of Stop Drop & Bowl for helping us, that one was for Ronni who came down and had a brag about how good she was, although she can come back next week because I know we can’t put two good performances together!”

Jared, The Lenny’s: “5 days in a hospital bed, 5 hours out and I came down to bowl!”

Scotty, Buffed Helmets 1: “Buffed Helmets kicked out by 8:45, 4 broken soldiers unable to spend their $40 winnings”

John Manning Up: “Apparently if you give away 22 shots in 3 ends, you don’t win too often”

Bruce, Bowled Guys: “We just had a good night, Our Powerplays worked superbly (Picked up 4 twice), and they helped us out by knocking out their only bowl on a drive to give us a 6”

Dianne, Macatac 2: “Duncan (Macpherson) is sleeping in the spare room tonight!”

Ladder