To cut a long story short, Manning played Osborne Park at Osborne Park on Saturday, which is always a match-up that resembles Stone Cold Steve Austin wrestling The Rock, thanks to a history of big games against each other, and Manning having a habit of signing several of Ozzy Park’s best and brightest.

Come 5:30 in the evening, we had lost the aggregate by a mere 4 shots across 4 rinks, 69 to 73…

And didn’t win a single rink.

Lewis Grigg’s four (AJ Heal, Scott O’Brien & Jaxon Butler) were 0-13 down after 5 ends against Ryan Brown (Tyrone Alberti, Chris Schell & Kristian Carr), and lost 22-23… Manning did hold 3 on the last end, Lewie had a straight shot at the 4th and 5th bowls, and somehow found a gap the size of a thimble.

Okay, it was closer to the size of a ten-pin bowling bowl.

Next door, Shane Knott’s four (Mark Wunnenberg, Andy Lill & Joe Angel) lost a back-and-forth game 15-17 against John ‘Guts’ Goddard (Kevin Pickering, Gary Caffell & Callum Alberti), which turned out to be the biggest margin of the day.

Yes, 2 shots was the biggest margin of the day, this is how cruel it was.

Next door, Tom Mitchell’s four (Nathan Jones, Brad Hogg & Miles Kemp) led Sean Mawdsley’s four (Segan Pasalich, Andrew Pasalich & Tristan Massang) by 3 shots (16-13) with 2 ends to go, then dropped 2 on the 20th End, then on a final end that saw the holding shot exchanged no fewer than 8 times, Mawdsley’s team survived a desperate drive by Tommy (By now we were playing for the aggregate) and took a 16-16 draw.

And then there was our rink.

‘We’ (JT, Peter Ker, Blake Butler & Cody Packer) took on Jack East’s four (Dale Marsland, Tod Weir and Connor Biddle), in what was Cody’s first game back at Osborne Park since he migrated south before the season, and there was the added story of Cody getting straight from Sydney via Brisbane after 2 delayed flights, and on the whole it was a typical tight Premier League kind of game full of 1s and 2s, but the difference was we just kept getting enough bowls in the head (Blake picked up at least 3 wicks for shot) during the 1st Half of the game and led 11-3 after 11 ends.

All told, there still wasn’t much difference between the teams throughout the 2nd Half as well, but the ultimate difference was Ozzies shortened the ends up and plucked out a couple of 1s, and Jack East to his credit started drawing much more effectively, and it told on the scoreboard as we’d had a few multiples cut down to 1s by Jack during the 1st Half, then on the 12th End he dropped 2 more shots in to cut the lead from 11-3 to 11-6…

Then a few ends later when it was 11-9, such was Cody’s luck on Saturday that he played a good drive to break up the head, only for the jack to shoot right instead of straight to put us 4 down, then he did what he could to save the situation and drew no worse than 2nd shot, only for Jack to clean his bowl out with a spot-on drive to give the Saints the lead 13-12 after 17, their first lead of the game.

That lead did last all of 1 end as we picked up a replying 3 on the 18th, then picked up another 1 on the 19th to lead 16-13 as we went up and back…

And this is when our day went to hell.

So on the 20th End, we were holding shot knowing full well that Jack was going to clean out the holder and try to make a number for Ozzies, and ultimately Cody helped out and got 3rd shot and watched on as Jack did indeed hit a short bowl on to the holder to make shot, so it was 16-14 with an end to play, and the aggregate margin was no more than 4 shots in it.

On the final end, Connor Biddle put 2 within 2 feet, but finally I got a short end right with my last bowl and managed to snag 2nd shot no worse than 2 feet behind, which was still there when we crossed over.

Jack’s first bowl he drew in for 2nd shot to tie the rink on the live scoreboard, so the tactic now was pretty straight forward – Play with weight and attempt to use the short bowls to push the jack as close to the ditch as possible, where we had my well-placed catcher in the waiting.

But, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and Cody only just cut under and whacked my second shot out to leave us 3 down, and that was probably the bowl that did us in, because instead of being a drawn game on the live board when he next stepped on the mat, he was going to have to play with weight just to save game… Usually a recipe for disaster.

So, Jack put his last bowl a metre behind, sitting there as if it were Peter Schmeichel getting ready to stop a shot as Cody waited for the other rinks to finish before sending down the last bowl of the day…

During the wait, I did mention to Peter that there was every chance that even if Cody got the jack, then with the way his luck was going it’d ping off Jack’s bowl and shoot to the left where Ozzies had another 3 bowls waiting.

Turned out it didn’t matter, because Cody got his weight spot on, but he knew straight out of the hand that something was wrong, and could only watch helplessly as it held out a foot wide and missed everything – Ozzies held 3 and won the rink 17-16, having led for all of 2 ends out of 21, all we could do was shake hands and throw our hats in frustration.

It does go to show, even the best current men’s bowler in Western Australia, who would rate in the top particle of bowlers in Australia, a bloke whose approach to the game is so thorough some would complement him as methodical, is as fallible as you and me when he’s on the mat.

I guess John Denver was right… Some days are diamonds, and some days are stone.