A few short weeks ago during a Tuesday roll-up at Manning with my offsider Half Price, I was asked an important question by Paul Smith, the Man from Mukinbudin, and that was if I’d be interested in playing in the upcoming Men’s State Fours with the very experienced Sam Perica, who has returned for another stint at Manning, a relationship now akin to Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, and Sam’s mate ‘Mick’ Marovic from Stirling, the most Croatian man at the most Croatian club in Perth… Stirling Adriatic.

Not having ever played in the State Fours and having no plans for this year (Because I didn’t think I’d find a team), I said yes, with the plan being that myself and Smithy would form the heavy hitting front end with Mick and Sam as the Adriatic back end, although I wasn’t to realise that Sam didn’t know me well enough (At the time), so when he entered the team, he had me written down as ‘J Titherage’.

So out of a field of 99 teams 396 bowlers, I WAS THE ONLY BOWLER THAT DIDN’T HAVE THEIR FIRST NAME SPELLED OUT, AND MY SURNAME WASN’T EVEN SPELLED CORRECTLY.

Just call me Clint Eastwood… The Man With No Name.

Eventually, Sectional Saturday came around, and Sam kindly offered to serve as my taxi driver to the fabled land of Ellenbrook, better known in Perth slang as Ellenbronx because it’s so far north of everything, and I honestly couldn’t say I’d played bowls at Ellenbrook, but as I found out their synthetic greens are pretty similar to our C Green, so I had absolutely no complaints.

And remember, the green is never the problem, it’s the idiots bowling on it.

Now, in the first game on a warm Saturday morning we took on the four Balls – Normie of Kardinia (The current Men’s Singles champion of Kardy), Terry from Warnbro, Robbie at his home club of Ellenbrook (Himself a distinguished former Australian representative), and the skip was Brad from Pinjarra, who is the current Men’s Country Week Pairs champion, and the first 8 ends were a shitshow on our part, as myself and Paul struggled to get our line right (Giving Sam no help at all), and Team Perica subsequently fell to a 1-11 deficit, and the end we hit rock bottom was when Mick told Sam to whack the shot bowl (The jack had rebounded on to Smithy’s bowl) back a metre to give us 5 or 6 shots, something Sam didn’t want any part of because he could easily draw a second shot, and we had the mat sewn up and could start playing to our length…

Naturally, Sam got caught in two minds, so he hit the holder and the jack went back half a metre instead, and we dropped 2 to fall 10 shots behind.

Then, the big hitting Manning Division 1 front end arrived and started putting a bit of heat on the Balls, starting from when we picked up 2 (Thanks to Mick smacking the jack into the ditch) to get the mat and get to 3-11, and now playing to our length, we picked up consecutive 3s and a 1 to make it a 10-11 ballgame with a good 4 ends to play.

The Balls finally ended the run with a 1 to make it 10-12, then Sammy drew a pair of superb shots on consecutive ends to make it 12-12 with a sudden death final end to come, and we found ourselves holding 3 down to the skips, as Robbie’s attempts to wick off a short bowl by Terry narrowly came unstuck.

Sam’s first bowl went close to the ditch, knowing Brad would have a big drive, and Pinjarra’s finest wicked off Terry’s front bowl, but proceeded to miss the jack and whack his only bowl out of the head, so were holding 5…

Once again, Sam put his last bowl near the ditch (Or at least attempted to), and with the last act of the game, Brad drove hard to kill the end or put the jack in the ditch, but this time he missed the jack by a bowl’s width, and with our only lead of the game, we had won 17-12 from 1-11 behind!

What a memorable debut game in the State Fours, and once again, what’s the best time to take the lead… the last end.

After a barbecue lunch provided by our gracious hosts, we took on the Bayswater team (Mark, Peter, Chris and Ziggy) in Game 2, who had pulled a stunner on the Bassendean team with a 17-9 win in Game 1, despite the fact that they’re playing no higher than 2nd Division at Bayswater, while Basso’s crew are featuring in Division 1 White.

To paraphrase George W. Bush, never misunderestimate your opponents.

Thankfully, we didn’t fall into that trap, and despite dropping 2 on the first end, we were now all familiar enough with each other’s games to form a decent team, despite Mick and Sam constantly evoking scenes of Frank and Estelle Costanza from Seinfeld, and we promptly rocketed out to lead 17-2 after 8 ends, as the Bayswater team didn’t seem to enjoy our tactic of repeated long ends.

Then, we got out-drawn and dropped a 3 and a 2 to have the lead cut to 17-7, but from there on it was back to business as usual, sealing the game with 2 ends to play and leading 26-7 before the final end, but despite us holding 2 with a bowl to play, Mark Acton finally had a moment of glory and tucked the jack back to the waiting catchers for 4, and despite us winning in a landslide, the Bayswater boys celebrated reaching double figures.

26-11 the final score, and out of the 11 ends we held, 10 were worth multiple shots.

Another key result for our sake was the Bassendean team winning 22-11 against the shattered Balls, meaning we were the only team on 2 wins, and had no fewer than 9 shots to play with to get out of the section, but were we going to play defensively?

Heck no.

With the time approaching 3:30 in the afternoon, and Brad Henley’s (From Kardinia) faulty stereo blasting out Radio Gaga, the moment had arrived for the decisive final game against the Bassendean team (David, John, Eugene and Norm), three of whom (Eugene the exemption) had featured in Bassendean’s 1 White flag team last year, and the first 6 ends were a solid arm wrestle – Norm would land a toucher near the jack and and we’d keep them to 1, then we’d flick the jack around and pick up 1, and all told we led narrowly 4-3 after 6.

Now, some time that afternoon, Master Tactician Perica had noticed that the Balls got back into the second game against Basso (Who were leading 19-3) by bringing the mat up and playing short ends, disrupting Basso’s long game, which worked pretty well as they recovered 8 shots (Basso still went on to win the game 22-11), so every time we won an end, Sam instructed me to set the end of the mat on the T and attempt to set the head 2 metres past the start of the line.

It took a few ends, but eventually the tactic worked so well that the Human Rights Commission are on to us for our treatment of Norm Kirkup.

On the 7th end, we picked up a 3 to break the game open and lead 7-3, then the next end Mick had drawn shot with our only bowl within 2 metres, and David the Flying Dutchman simply had to whack him out to pick up for 5 or 6 and really put the heat on us…

Unfortunately his line was too wide, and the next end we went short and drew 5 bowls within a foot of the jack to lead 13-3, and it was pretty much curtains from there, as the next end Basso were holding 2 before Sam drove into the head and sent the jack to my back bowl, then we got another 3, then held the next 2 ends to hold an unbeatable 20-3 with 2 ends to play.

Still, it wasn’t all bad for Bassendean, as Eugene did provide us this golden comment when seeing Sam and Mick talking to each other:

“You wouldn’t want Sam being pregnant, because I reckon he’d drop it.”

Eventually, both teams decided to play until the 14th end so we’d finish closer to our bags and a quicker route home, and after going through the motions, we agreed to make the final score 21-4, just so the Basso boys didn’t get stuck on 3 shots for 10 ends.

So that was Chapter 1 of my first State Fours journey, a day that had started in an enormous hole ended with us pulling off a superb clean sweep of Section 17 to make it to the knockouts, the first time I’ve ever made the knockouts of a State event, but there was one final twist, when Sam (Who was in a hurry to get to a dinner dance) missed the Leach Highway turnoff at Perth Airport to get on to Manning Road when we drove home, so we drove all the way from Ellenbrook to Forrestfield.

Would not recommend.