After originally looking forward to a much-needed break from bowls over the festive period, there was still one last event to play in 2024, and that was the time-honoured State Pairs, and when it comes to blue riband events in Western Australia, the State Pairs is one of the two original state events in WA Bowls (Alongside the State Fours), dating back to 1900, some 2 years before the State Singles began, and alongside the State Singles and Champion of Champions singles, the State Pairs is one of the toughest events to win in WA, given the format is 2x2x2x2 bowls, you have to play & win a minimum of 8 games (6 games of 15 ends + the Semi & Final being 18) across 3 days, which go over some 9 hours per day, although if you get drawn in the alignment sections, it’s 9 games across 3 days, making it a true test of physical & mental endurance, teamwork and consistency.

The State Pairs (For both Men & Women) is also unique in that it’s the only current WA open state event that isn’t fixed in to start on a weekend, as the women play their State Pairs from Wednesday to Friday in mid-December, and the first day of the Men’s Pairs is typically on December 27, which this year is a Friday, although next year it will be a Saturday.

Having first played in the event last year, I once again teamed up with by partner in crime Sam Perica, and this year we were drawn in Section 3 at Sorrento, where 4 out of the 7 teams with Manning players got drawn for sectional play, with the Final also due to be played at Sorrento on Sunday afternoon, and fun fact, Sorrento Bowling Club is actually in Duncraig, that place where Daniel Ricciardo comes from…

And more importantly, we avoided the alignment sections.

Game 1: defeated Ralph Murray and Kevin Townley (South Perth) 16-11

After seeing Steve Smith and Pat Cummins plunder the Indian attack for an hour, our first game at 9:30 on Friday morning was against the South Perth duo of Ralph Murray (Aka Ralph Malph) and Kevin Townley, and despite the apparent mismatch in divisions to the other teams in our section (We were one of 3 teams of 1st Division bowlers while Ralph and Kevin play 3rd Division), our South Perth counterparts gave a damn good account of themselves with some solid draw bowls to hold the first 3 ends of the game and lead 3-0, but myself and Sam crucially kept them to singles, then we got going (In this time I hit my only drive of the weekend) and took the lead by the 5th End and never trailed after that.

The big break came on the 12th End (We were up 10-8), when myself and Sam drew 4 bowls within a foot and sent the score out to 14-8 with 3 to play, another 1 made it 15-8, but Ralph and Kevin picked up a 3 and made it 15-11 and a live game with an end to play, and Ralph did have a shot to trail the jack 3 feet and make that 4 or 5 to potentially hold game, but his bowl was a bit too wide, so we held 1 and saw out the game 16-11.

A good first up win as we headed into the lunch break, with two tough games to come in the afternoon.

Game 2: defeated Kyle Cornell and Travis Ingram (Mount Lawley) 18-9

On paper this was the toughest game of the section, as ‘Fluffy’ Kyle Cornell and Travis Ingram are both part of the Mount Lawley Premier League team that are currently dominating Saturday Premier League (That said, myself and Sam have both featured in Premier League this season) and the Mounters duo had a massive 25-8 win first up against Arthur Bartlett and Wayne Olive of Kalamunda, meaning we absolutely had to win the game to have any chance of progressing from the section… on top of that, this game was also on the ditch rink with a swirling breeze.

Funnily enough, myself and Sam also played against Travis in the State Pairs sectional last year at Doubleview, and in a game for the bridesmaid status in our section, we held on to win 12-10.

Early on in this game, Kyle and Travis held a 7-4 lead after 7 ends, thanks to Kyle playing a well-executed last bowl drive that sent us from 3 up to 3 down on the 3rd End, then the next key moment came on the 8th End, when Sam had last bowl and originally thought about going for a trademark drive given we were 2 down, but we both agreed the better shot was to play a metre through and attempt to move the jack back where he had numbers…

Sure enough, Sam played a superb line and trailed the jack a metre into a nesting pack of our bowls, converting from 2 down to 4 up to claim the lead 8-7, and despite getting pegged back to 8-8 on the next end, we never trailed after Sam’s big conversion.

After going back and forth for a few more ends, another decisive moment came when we led 10-8 after 10 ends and were down 1 shot without any bowls remaining, but Kyle made a devastating error when he played too tight with too much weight trying to add another counter, hitting the shot bowl onto the jack and moving it 2 feet where we had 2 catchers waiting.

So thanks to that break it was 12-8 with 4 ends to play, a rather big lead with how tight the heads were, we then exchanged shots in the next two ends to make it 13-9 as we went up and back, then Sam’s booming drive came into play for the first time in the day as he killed the penultimate end twice with us down multiple shots, then on the third time around we set it up pretty damn well, holding 2 shots and covering off pretty much all bases to ensure we couldn’t drop a number, and ultimately Kyle ran through a gap twice to give us 2 shots and a 15-9 lead with an end to play…

And on the final end, we pretty much covered everything off again as the Mounters duo had the shot, but we had the next four shots to ensure no number would be dropped, leaving Kyle having to play a desperate low percentage drive to try and kick the jack right to make 5, which still wouldn’t have been enough to win…

Instead, he got the jack but sent it to the open left side, giving us 3 shots to make the final score 18-9, a result that didn’t tell the whole story of the game, but we were the better team in the second half and earned the win, and we now had the section in our hands.

Game 3: defeated Arthur Bartlett & Wayne Olive (Kalamunda) 17-13

With the section on the line against Kalamunda’s Division 1 Blue duo of Arthur and Wayne, myself and Sam shot out of the blocks to an 8-0 lead after 4 ends as our short ends tactics paid dividends, and that fast start was pretty much the difference in the game, as the Kalamunda duo were left playing catch-up the entire game, and to their credit they came back pretty hard at us a couple of times, first recovering 5 shots in 2 ends after our start, but we steadied again after that and recovered those shots back…

Then Arthur and Wayne came back again and got within 14-12 with 3 ends to go thanks to a big pickup of 4 shots, and we were quite fortunate to still have that lead even before then, as Arthur narrowly missed a couple of running shots by narrow margins which could’ve had us in all sorts of crap, especially when we only had 1 bowl in the head that happened to be the shot bowl.

But once again, myself and Sam steadied and picked up a 2 and a 1 to lead 17-12 with an end to play, and after Sam killed the original final end after the 6pm bell went (Even though we were never dropping more than 4), we set it up again so that a 5 or a 6 was never on the cards, and eventually Arthur’s last bowl was a drive that scattered a few bowls and stayed for 1 shot, making the final score 17-13.

So as the clock passed 6:10 on Friday evening, some 9 hours after we first got on the green, we had won Section 3 with 3 wins to reach the knockouts of the State Pairs for the first time, earning a trip to Osborne Park on Saturday…

Although, there was some serious doubts about the fitness of Sam as he struggled with back soreness during the last game, so much so he told me to seriously consider getting a substitute, but after an injection, a warm bath and a good sleep, he was passed fit to play on Saturday morning.

Of course, as we found out 2 days later, it wouldn’t be the last time a Manning team defeated a Kalamunda team on Rink 2 of B Green at Sorrento that weekend.

Round of 32: defeated Brad Spiers & Noel Tillbrook (Leeman) 15-8

We had been expecting to get a tough game against Ozzy Park locals Dale Marsland and Tristan Massang (Who had already won the State Fours this season) first up in the knockouts, but as we found out on Friday evening, they had been thoroughly beaten by the Leeman duo of Brad Spiers and Noel Tillbrook, who picked up a 7 on the first end and won 24-11 to win Section 4 on shots up in a boilover, and I say a boilover because out of the 104 people in the Bowls 360 tipping competition, they had been picked by exactly 0% of tipsters.

If the WA TAB had betting on sections for the State Pairs, they’d have absolutely cleaned up on Section 4.

So come 9:30 we were on Ozzy Park’s A Green against country larrikins Brad & Noel, and Noel looked like he was ready to rob a bank with his brim hat and facemask, but in the meantime he stuck to robbing us of shots as our game turned into an arm wrestle that featured plenty of top notch draw bowls from all four players, Brad in particular played some great shots to cut us out of a few numbers, and through 12 ends the biggest hold either team had was all of 2 shots as we led a mere 9-6…

Then on the 13th End, Brad made 2 shots for the Leeman team as they reduced our lead to 9-8, and going down to the skips’ last 2 bowls on the penultimate end we were 2 down in the head (It was a measure for 3rd shot) and staring down the barrel of trailing with an end to play, as Sam’s first bowl was slightly wide of where we needed it, but on the next attempt he heard my call, adjusted his line by a foot…

And trailed the jack into a nest of our catchers to convert it to 5 up with an absolute whopper of a bowl.

It was one of the most devastatingly executed shots you’d see, and it pretty much decided the match as we held a 14-8 lead with an end to play, so we set a long end and covered all bases, and Noel’s first attempt to kill the end only resulted in the jack shifting right where the Leeman team had nothing relatively close, while Brad’s attempts to kill the end didn’t come to fruition, giving us the victory 15-8 as we settled for 1 shot.

So against my own expectations we were into the Last 16 of the State Pairs, a mildly impressive achievement for a player like myself in his fourth pennant season, especially considering the caliber of players that we would be coming up against in the afternoon…

Round of 16: lost to Clive Adams & Simon Alden (Cambridge/Bassendean) 14-15 on an extra end

Our next opponents were the distinguished duo of Clive Adams and Simon Alden, and for the uninitiated, Clive ‘Plucker’ Adams is one of the commentators for the Australian Open and the Bowls Premier League, and on the green he’s one the most distinguished players in the history of WA bowls, having won every major state event, an Australian Championship pairs title in 1999, played as a skip in Division 1 pennants for at least 27 years, and represented the WA state side on 240 occasions across 25 years.

Another fun fact, Sam and Clive were teammates at Cambridge for 3 seasons, as recently as 2020, before Sam transferred to a few more clubs before rejoining Manning.

On the other hand, Simon (Who was Clive’s teammate at Wanneroo years ago) is also an accomplished Premier League skip for Bassendean, he runs the aforementioned Bowls 360 website, which contains the fabled rumours page about player transfers across Perth bowls, which is refreshed ad nauseam over the winter by hundreds of people, and his nickname is Dipper, given his moustache resembles that of Hawthorn great Robert DiPierdomenico.

I did get a laugh that on one hand we had Dipper, and you have me being named after Jason Dunstall… it was a Hawthorn 1980s reunion.

Clive and Simon also came into the game having knocked out the defending champions Russell Bates and Brad Ball of Pinjarra, so needless to say we were an underdog, but I didn’t come this far to start crapping myself, so I was more than prepared to deploy the fabled ‘Don Chipp’ strategy of ‘keeping the bastards honest’ with relentless draw bowls…

And to an extent, it worked surprisingly well through the first 6 ends, as we got bowls in the area and had a few lucky results our way, so much so we were up 7-2 against the more fancied pairing, then came the end that pretty much cost us the game.

On that 7th End, we set the same length we’d been playing for most of the weekend, and we got the line quite comfortably, but for whatever reason we just kept playing a metre through, so with 1 bowl to come we were at least 4 down and simply needing a bowl close, and to Sam’s credit he wound up drawing the shot a foot away, but when you’ve got one bowl in the head against a player as good as Clive Adams you know exactly what’s going to happen, and Plucker fired a forehand arrow and cleaned the holder out, and not only did he clean it out, he also moved our next closest bowl a foot further away and ensured it was 5 shots down, undoing all our good work with 1 bowl.

So with the momentum now going against us, on the 8th End Sam drilled the jack into the ditch with a booming drive, his bowl going with the jack and burying itself a foot and a half from the jack, but after we couldn’t put up a decent blockade on the open hand, Clive was able to draw the shoot a foot from the ditch, then on the next end Simon and Clive smothered the jack and forced Sam to drive again to try and cut it down, ultimately doing well to keep it to 3, so from 7-2 up we were now 7-11 down, and at this stage history would be littered with teams that lost confidence in themselves and promptly lost by a cricket score…

However, myself and Sam decided to give the growing peanut gallery their money’s worth and make this a heck of a contest, and on the 10th End we were down 1 shot but holding 2nd and 3rd and Sam having last bowl, and he played another blinder by coming through with a metre of weight, picking the gap and sitting the holder out to make 3 shots, making the score 10-11, then on the next end Simon held us out of a number by drawing shot after I’d moved the jack, and after exchanging shots over the next 3 ends, coming down to the last end we were 11-14 down, needing some little piece of fortune to fall our way to try and keep the game alive..

As it happened, the first bit of fortune came when my last bowl got the shoulder of Sam’s bowl that was 2 foot short, and both bowls managed to wiggle past both of Simon’s bowls in to count for 2 shots, which was part one of the equation complete:

Then down to the skips, Clive somehow went through a foot gap with a backhand drive without touching anything, then after Sam couldn’t add another counter, Clive switched hands to a forehand drive and went through a foot-wide gap on the other side, leaving Sam with a draw for 3 shots to send the game to an extra end, and I could hear Clive say to Simon that Sam was going to draw it…

And he was spot on, as Sam drew third shot stone cold, sending the game to an extra end at 14 apiece after 15 ends.

Now, the last time myself and Sam made the knockouts of a State event, we lost in an extra end in the State Fours Quarter Finals after we lost the toss for last bowl, and it was a case of lightning striking twice, as we lost the toss for last bowl and got the mat, but this time around it wasn’t as heartbreaking or dramatic as losing on the last bowl of the game.

I’d drawn the shot about 2 foot short of the jack, but on the first changeover, the decisive bowl came from Clive when he played a backhand draw with his second bowl that trickled in and finished as a resting toucher, a bowl that even had Sam and myself applauding.

With that bowl tucking the jack away from the backhand, the best percentage chance we had of getting the shot back was getting my 2nd shot in the guts with a metre of weight on the forehand, as the forehand drive was blocked for Sam or myself to attempt to kill the end, and the backhand (The wide hand for that end) would’ve required an even better draw shot than Clive’s, and we couldn’t risk a backhand drive because we had no catchers to the right in the event of it going wrong, and would’ve been even at least 3 shots down and blocked on the forehand.

So naturally I had to try the forehand upshot, but while the weight was ‘sufficient’ I didn’t get the grass right on either of the shots, so we were down to 2 bullets, and first up Sam went too wide, at which point the members of the peanut gallery suggested to Clive that he put a blocker in, which got a good laugh from everyone, and as it turned out Clive did attempt to put a blocker in, which didn’t really change our shot as it was too narrow to affect the forehand line…

Then, with his last bowl, Sam got his weight right again and adjusted the grass, but not quite enough for our sake as it missed my bowl by a foot and sailed through the head, and all we could do was shake hands as Clive and Simon progressed 15-14 after 16 ends.

It was an unfortunate case of lightning striking twice for Manning teams, because next door to us our teammates Warren Holt and Mark Wunnenberg lost a gruelling game 8-10 to Justin Opie and John Slavich, as they only just lost the measure on the last end to send the game to an extra end… it was also another unfortunate case of me losing a big game by a single shot this season, as I lost the Manning 2-Bowl Singles Semi Final by a shot (17-18), lost the Club Men’s Triples Final by a shot (14-15), and now this.

Still, I can recall Clive telling me after the game that I should be proud of the way I played, which meant something to me coming from a player of Clive’s standing in the game, and it helped me accept that there’s still a carrot on the end of the stick… it just might take a few years to get to it.

Still, the State Pairs ended in a way that I was quite happy with, as my Manning teammates Blake Butler and Miles Kemp went on to win the title at Sorrento on Sunday, which was Blake’s second state title after his State Singles win way back in 2019, having lost multiple finals since then, and Kempy won his third state title to go with his two State Triples wins (2016 and 2024), with it also marking the first time a Manning pair have won the State Pairs title since 2016.

They’ll have the chance to represent WA in the Australian Championships in Burnie, Tasmania in October, and the result was also quite surprising because Blake (And Kempy) hadn’t won a pairs title of any kind in the entire time they’ve been at Manning, up until the weekend.

Here’s one last random thought – the last game on Rink 2 of Sorrento’s B Green on Friday finished with a Manning team defeating a Kalamunda team…

And the last game on Rink 2 of Sorrento’s B Green on Sunday finished with a Manning team defeating a Kalamunda team.