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With the New Years break done, the Summer 2025 Jack Attack season ignited in a blazing inferno at Manning Memorial, which wasn’t that hard because it did reach 38 degrees in Perth on Wednesday, and we’ve had a whole hodgepodge of team changes for this season, with a grand total of 22 teams entered, with 3 new entries for this season:

– Rarebirdies have traded their golf clubs for lawn bowls thanks to Crawshaw Crescent stalwart Peter Bowen, and fun fact, you can find the Rarebirdies crew at Manning every Saturday afternoon all year round, and their tenure at Manning Memorial has been so enduring that they have their own honour board:

Yep, we have a bowls honour board, a darts honour board, and a golf honour board.

– After sitting out 2024, the Top Shots (Jerry, Irene, Gordon, Leslie) are back in business, restoring the Manning Darts team to having 2 teams in the field once again, the other being Verse 1.

– After missing the Spring 2024 season, our resident Scotsmen in The Jackobites (or Jacobites, take your pick) are back in for this season, although Chris has told us that with a few of his countrymen unavailable for a few weeks (His mate Mush is performing at Fringe World), the 2025 Jackobites will have a Latin flavouring, in the form of Catalina (Chris’ partner) and Andreas (Her friend) who come to us from Colombia, inspiring their Spanish name change…

“From the Highlands to the Andes, we are LOS JACKOBITAS!” – Chris.

Contrary to what I was told, they are definitely not from Mexico.

Pepperjack(s) are now Baby Got Jack, another top notch team name from Alex, aka Sir Mixalot.

As for our departing teams:

Chiko Bowls have been devoured, and based on Week 1 their former players have filled some empty spots in Sausage Bowls.

Holding Shots have been whacked out of the head, although several of them will be available as floaters for any team requiring a player.

With Quinny going to parts unknown, Norfolk Enchants are taking a sabbatical for this season, to return for the November-December Spring 2025 edition of Manning Jack Attack, with the CDs also taking a sabbattical for this season, ending a 5-year consecutive run in Manning Jack Attack…

And sadly, we won’t be seeing Ten Pin this season, ending a run that spanned all the way back to the origins of Manning Jack Attack in 2015, in which they set the record for the most appearances and tiebreak appearances.

Which means the new longest-tenured team, ALMOST unbelievably, is The Great Bowls of Fire, who have gone around for at least 9 consecutive years, which was so long ago that Loose Bruce was playing alongside Todd in those days, and young Jamie was 4 foot tall…. he’s now at 8 foot 5.

The Overall Night

Overall, it was a fairly slow beginning to the new season, and it seemed to show in the results as we had only 2 tiebreaks from what was 10 games played, with plenty of wrong biases as most teams simply needed the run in the legs after 6 weeks away… even yours truly was off with the fairies, while Half Price spent 20 minutes talking when he was supposed to be giving out a toucher voucher on C Green.

Starting from the top, 1st place for Week 1 went to Manning Up, who recorded one of the biggest variance wins ever seen in Manning Jack Attack, as they defeated Los Jackobitas by 34 shots (16-1 19-0), a thumping that Donald Trump and the United Nations have each described as one of the worst human rights breaches ever seen.

The margin can be explained by the simple fact that Manning Up actually had their once in a blue moon game where every player plays well, while Andreas and Catalina hadn’t even picked up a bowl until 15 minutes before the game, and were still getting a crash course during the game (On that note, a big thanks to Chris + John and the Manning Up crew for helping us out), but thankfully it wasn’t a complete shutout as Chris drew an absolute pearler on the 3rd end of the night, finishing half a foot behind the jack to hold 1.

In summation, the 34-shot win will be viewed with more skepticism than Jason Gillespie’s double century against Bangladesh in 2006.

2nd Overall went to the Top Shots, who were the only new team to win in Week 1 with a rather straight forward straight sets 15-shot win against B Cups 1 on Grass Rink 4 (11-2 7-1), with Jerry, Irene and Gordon claiming 8 of the 10 ends against Sharyn’s team, in what was a case of B-Grade B Cups.

Third overall went to Rip It Up with their 11-shot straight sets win against the debuting Rarebirdies on Synthetic Rink 4 (10-3 6-2), as Peter’s suggestions of using a putter instead of a driver to his teammates didn’t seem to work on a bowling green, while the representatives of the Manning Rippers have obviously put in a good pre-season ahead of the return of footy season next month, and it turned out all they needed was a couple of nights of drinking while briefly stopping for a game of bowls.

I can tell you from experience, Rarebirdies should’ve been using sand wedges on the synthetic, and you use a 9 Iron on the grass.

Finishing off the results for Week 1 in random order:

I did mention 10 games instead of 11 because the Salty Bowls were a late no-show against Bowl Movements, so in accordance with the revised rules from last season, Bowl Movements were awarded all 4 points with no variance, and it is disappointing to have a team miss out on a game when we could’ve organised fill-ins with prior notice, although Alex and the team were chuffed because they picked up the 4 points, and 4 pints, without playing a bowl.

– One of the biggest Wednesday night boil overs in many years was Sausage Bowls cleaning up defending champions the Shapes in straight sets by 10 shots (9-1 6-4) on Synthetic Rink 6, as unbeknownst to Half Price when he did the fixtures, the Sausage Bowls of last year have pretty much vanished and are now made up of former members of Chiko Bowls (Friends of Ellen Mac), so on paper it was a fair mismatch…

And in reality it was indeed a mismatch, albeit for Craig, Peter and the Shapes, as the Sausage Bowls borrowed Pricey’s bowls and spent the night plonking them within a metre of the jack, which goes to show it isn’t the bowls that are the problem, it’s the Neanderthal bowling with them…

While the Shapes are obviously still nursing some serious premiership hangovers, which won’t help them while they try find the answers to their poor performance within the next month, or else their title defence is going the way of Ansett.

– Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good started off with a 3-point win against last season’s runners-up the Bowling Stones on Grass Rink 2, drawing the 1st Set 4-4 after the Stones deployed their last end powerplay and held 1 to share the points, but the youth brigade of EBIG, led by Ben (Also featuring young Luke and Tommy) in place of Lee, took the 2nd Set 5-2 to win the game.

– The Unbelievabowls typically kick off with a good win in Week 1, and they started off Summer 2025 with a straight sets win against Rock N Bowl with a scoreline that was better suited for Manning Tennis Club than Manning Bowling Club, winning the 1st Set 6-3 and wrapping up the 4 points with a 6-4 win the 2nd Set, achieving the maximum result in spite of going down on both of their powerplay ends.

– The Bowled Guys produced a straight sets win against a shorthanded Baby Got Jack on Grass Rink 1, as 3 solid holds of 2, 4 and 3 got them the 1st Set 9-5, followed by a lowing scoring 4-2 win in the 2nd Set to claim the 4 points, although it wasn’t all bad news for Alex, as he was finally able to get his timing right with the whistle to signal a drinks voucher for the next toucher, which he duly delivered right in front of my eyes… it only took him 3 years.

On Synthetic Rink 3, Crawshaw came from absolutely nowhere to defeat the Great Bowls of Fire, losing the 1st Set 2-5 and trailing 0-7 with 2 ends remaining, but somehow Graeme and the Crawshaw crew conjured 3 on a power play, followed by 2 on the last end to win the set 8-7, then they survived a few drives and won the tiebreak, achieving all this despite being without manager Wilko (Who went to go and see an old friend), Disorderly Decca, and a whole heap of other semi-believable Crawshaw characters.

The Great Bowls’ late misery continued when Todd delivered a wrong bias in full view of everybody, after which he curiously left before we started the fines session, however, Todd has since acknowledged his fineable error.

B Cups 2 were the best of the B Cups in Week 1, defeating Verse 1 in straight sets by 10 shots on Grass Rink 3, and the decisive break came in the last 2 ends of the 1st Set, as B Cups 2 trailed 1-5, picked up a shot on the penultimate end to make it 2-5 with an end to play, then rammed in 4 on the last end to win the set 6-5, and Lisa and the team went on to pitch a shutout in the 2nd Set with an 8-0 win, and it left Mick longing for St Patrick’s Day, when he can finally see enough green to cancel out the sea of pink that the B Cups created on D Green:

– And saving the best for last, the contest of the night was the game between Macatac and the Buffed Helmets on Synthetic Rink 7, as the team of indoor cricketers went up against Como’s finest in an excellent standard of social bowls, with Mazey trading blows with Ellen Mac in the midst of their leads duel, Scotty engaged in some Steve Waugh style ‘mental disintegration’ with Russell in an attempt to distract him, because Scotty’s bowls weren’t going any better, while Mazey, Carry and Trish all had their moments and built up some very tight heads, as Macatac won the 1st Set 6-4 before the Buffs got the best of some tight ends to win the 2nd Set 6-1 to send the game to a tiebreak, and ultimately the winning moment came right at the start from Ellen Mac, landing a resting toucher that the Buffs couldn’t dislodge, giving the Maccers the win despite losing the variance.

All in all, a solid beginning after a 6-week break, and I think we were all just glad to get through the night.

Results

Grass 1: Bowled Guys (4pts +6) defeated Baby Got Jack, 9/5 4/2

Grass 2: Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good (3pts +3) defeated Bowling Stones (1pt -3), 4/4 5/2

Grass 3: B Cups 2 (4pts +9) defeated Verse 1, 6/5 8/0

Grass 4: Top Shots (4pts +15) defeated B Cups 1, 11/2 7/1

Synthetic 1: Bowl Movements (4pts) won in walkover vs Salty Bowls

Synthetic 2: Manning Up (4pts +34) defeated Los Jackobitas, 16/1 19/1

Synthetic 3: Crawshaw CC (3pts -2) defeated Great Bowls of Fire (2pts +2), 2/5 8/7 1/0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 4: Rip It Up (4pts +11) defeated Rarebirdies, 10/3 6/2

Synthetic 5: Unbelievabowls (4pts +5) defeated Rock N Bowl, 6/3 6/4

Synthetic 6: Sausage Bowls (4pts +10) defeated Shapes, 9/1 6/4

Synthetic 7: Macatac (3pts -3) defeated Buffed Helmets (2pts +3), 6/4 1/6 1/0 in the tiebreak

Ladder

Comments

Wilko, Crawshaw CC (After finding out that Peter was putting in his own team): “We put a spike outside of his house and stuck a for-sale sign on top… in revenge, he’s got a pigs head rotting away.”

Sir Mix-A-Lot Alex, Baby Got Jack: “Not bad considering we were down to our third and fourth reserves.”

Brad, Rip It Up: “Manning Tennis Club’s Rod Philp, son of two late Life Members of Manning Memorial Bowling Club (Ted and Joy), got an OAM… his title is now Sir Cumfrence”

Mazey, Buffed Helmets: “We gave them a run except Carry and Scotty were crap.”

Carry, Buffed Helmets: “We’ll come good in the coming weeks”

John, Manning Up: “I think it’s important to note that the score didn’t reflect the quality of the game”