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After a solid opening last Wednesday, we rolled on to Week 2 of the Summer 2025 edition of Manning Jack Attack, the Greatest Social Bowls Competition Between Manning Road and the Canning River, and after being reduced to a field of 20 teams on the green in Week One, we were back up to 24 teams this week, thanks to the arrivals of:

– Blue Bowls, led by Brad who once did a plumbing job for Half Price, and was still saved in his phone as Brad the plumber… as Pricey found out, he wasn’t calling him for a job, he was calling him to enter a Jack Attack team.

– Salty Bowls were back in action after a few personal matters required attending to last week, and a big thanks to Glen ‘Scratch’ O’Brien for making a cameo appearance and getting his young crew of bowlers up and running, his presence was greatly appreciated not only by them, but by myself, Half Price and the Buffed Helmets.

– Then, to keep up the even number, Jack-A-Hacks were entered as a new team, led this week by our good mate Duncan Macpherson of Macatac fame, although they may be a one week only proposition, because Chiko Bowls are apparently set for a comeback next week.

On another note, we had quite an amazing moment this week, as the video of the Week 6 Spider Challenge from last season, which was won by Sharyn from B Cups 1 in a thriller, managed to spread throughout not only the Australian bowling community, but through the Australian Facebook community, despite me thinking that particular edition was a fairly crappy edition of the Spider Challenge…

But somehow, at last check on Saturday morning, that video is now past 260,000 views, and for comparison, the highest viewed video from the last Bowls Premier League on the Bowls Australia Facebook page is an Alex Marshall highlight with 187,100 views.

Yes, a 25 second video of Sharyn from B Cups having the luck of the draw in a sea of projectiles got more views than a competition with the best players in Australia and the rest of the world – In short, if you want to make lawn bowls popular, you should just replace the Bowls Premier League with one giant Spider Challenge at Manning Memorial.

Imagine that, Alex Marshall, Aron Sheriff, Kelsey Cottrell, Aaron Wilson, Ben Twist and our own Kristina Krstic squaring off in a Spider Challenge against Decca from Crawshaw.

On the weather front, Wednesday night was one of the most pleasant Jack Attack nights we’ve had in some time, with a top of 25 degrees Celsius, dropping down to 20 with a sea breeze come 6:30pm… it was very tolerable.

The Spider Challenge

After the footage of the Week 6 Spider Challenge spread across Facebook, it was simply coincidence that Week 2 marked the first of the Spider Challenges for Summer 2025, and unlike that fabled Week 6 contest, the jack was nailed twice on Wednesday night, the first drive moving the jack out to the extreme right of the green and wiping out 90% of the field that had aimed for the middle of the green, and after a bit of a walk the winner was Peter from Rarebirdies, and the runner-up was John from Manning Up:

Interesting to note that John didn’t use his green Mustang bowls and instead used an old donated set given to the club… obviously he didn’t want to see his Mustang get totalled when Sharyn came through on a drive.

Overall Night

Once people realised where their bowls had finished up and the games began, the overall winners of Week 1 were Rock N Bowl, who defeated the Top Shots in straight sets by 19 shots (15-1 7-2) on Synthetic Rink 8, as conditions on Rink 8 could be best described as ‘Kardinia Park’ with the ditch side wing being shorter than the other wing, which ruined the Top Shots with their older bowls as they could only play one hand, while Rock N Bowl had the tighter Aeros and were able to play both hands, which clearly showed on the scorecard.

Rock N Bowl going from boiled lollies to chocolates after losing in straight sets in Week 1, while the Top Shots went in the opposite direction.

2nd place overall went to Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good (With Lee and Xavier joining Ben this week), who defeated Crawshaw CC in straight sets by 16 shots (6-2 14-2) on Synthetic Rink 4, landing a 4 on their 2nd Set powerplay on the 4th End to seal the game and propel themselves into the Top 3 on the night and 4th place overall on the ladder, as Wilko was left to wonder if he should’ve forced Decca into forming his own team instead of Peter:

Although, EBIG very nearly didn’t get any cash as I pulled off an almighty cock-up in the presentation, when I kept looking at Alex from Bowl Movements thinking he’d finished 2nd, seeing as they’d had a comfortable win on the grass… only to realise I’d completely misread the sheet and that they’d ONLY won by 6 shots, while EBIG had won by 16… Sarah Murdoch promptly made another appearance, while I was fined for my presenting equivalent of a wrong bias.

3rd overall went to Manning Up, who backed up their record win in Week 1 with a straight sets 15-shot win (11-0 9-5) against Baby Got Jack on Synthetic Rink 6, although it did get a bit tight in the 2nd Set as they trailed Sir Mix-A-Lot 3-5 with an end to play, but John deployed the powerplay and his micromanagers did the rest, going on to hold 3 to win the game 9-5, and it was an interesting tactic from John as he bookended his powerplays, the first coming on the first end of the game (Manning Up held 3) and the other on the aforementioned last end, a different tactic compared to the common powerplay tactic of using them on the 4th or 5th end of both sets… I wonder if others will catch on.

Manning Up are now at +49 shots on variance after 2 games… most Grand Final teams in Manning Jack Attack don’t even reach +49 shots in 5 weeks.

Finishing off the results for Week 2, and the game of the night, and the turnaround of the season, came from Los Jackobitas, who were on the receiving end of that almighty whipping from Manning Up in Week 1, but this week Chris debuted their new team shirts, which are a great celebration of their Scottish and South American roots with the unicorn and the Andean condor, plus the Scottish and what is actually the Ecuadorian flag instead of the Colombian flag, which could even be a nod to Julian Assange:

When the game kicked off, B Cups 1 won the 1st Set with another 12-1 thumping, then led 3-0 after 2 ends of the 2nd Set, but after that something magical happened, as Los Jackobitas won an end, brought the jack right up, and out of nowhere the team that was lucky to get one bowl out of 30 in the head started plonking bowls within 2 foot, and making even more noise than Sharyn and the team usually do…

Next thing you knew, after some superb back and forth in the final end, Los Jackobitas had gone on to win the set 6-3, setting up a memorable tiebreak in which Andreas and Catalina got some bowls in close, leaving it all down to Sharyn to try and drive them out, and her first drive wicked off a short bowl and only just missed the jack, while the second bowl managed to clean the B Cups’ only bowl out of the head to give Los Jackobitas 4 shots (Not that it counted for variance), and with Catalina screaming with delight, Los Jackobitas had WON, producing the greatest comeback since John Howard, and they celebrated accordingly.

Amazing scenes, especially when you now consider Los Jackobitas are now above the defending champion Shapes on the ladder.

Vivaaaaa Los Jackobitas!

Moving on, another upset on the night was Sausage Bowls backing up last week’s belting of the Shapes by defeating the Bowling Stones in a tiebreak on Synthetic Rink 2, which ran concurrently with the Jackobitas-B Cups tiebreak, with the Sausage Bowls (Reunited with Ellen’s friend Trudy) once again using Half Price’s bowls to good effect with a front knocker on the first bowl of the tiebreak, which the Stones tried in vain to either draw off or simply hit off, which means Sausage Bowls have now beaten both of the Spring 2024 Grand Finalists in the space of a fortnight, an event that would’ve been longer odds than Elvis Presley rising from the grave.

In a clash of the heavyweights, Macatac knocked off the Shapes in a tiebreak on Grass Rink 3, repeating a similar pattern from last week in that the Maccers lost the variance on the night but still went on to win the tiebreak, which puts Macatac in 7th on the ladder, albeit being the only team in the Top 12 with a negative shot variance, while the Shapes have been cast adrift at 0-2 as their title defence plummets faster than a John Denver joy flight, the only saving grace from Wednesday night being that they salvaged 2 points from the wreckage, leaving them 6 points adrift of the Top 2, a massive gap to overcome with 3 games remaining before the finals and several dozen results needing to go their way.

The Bowled Guys maintained their unbeaten start to the season with a straight sets win against Rip It Up, a game that featured a high-scoring 1st Set (12-10), that kicked off with the Bowled Guys claiming a full count of 6 on the 2nd End, then Bruce deployed the powerplay and held 3 to make it another 6 for the chrome dome team, giving them a 12-2 lead before Rip It Up deployed their own powerplay on the last end, only to find themselves 5 down again with Craig having the last bowl…

And in one of the best bowls barely anyone ever saw, he trailed the jack for 4 on the powerplay, making the final set score 12-10 to the Bowled Guys, a margin that could easily have been greater were it not for Craig’s other unmentioned heroics throughout the 1st Set, but unfortunately Rip It Up couldn’t keep up the heroics, and Loose Bruce, Rede and Jamie finished up with an 8-3 win the 2nd Set, keeping themselves level on points with Manning Up.

The aforementioned Bowl Movements finally got to play a game this season after getting the points from a forfeit last week, and they made up for lost time by defeating Rarebirdies in straight sets on Grass Rink 4, although it was a fairly low scoring game with just 14 shots across the 10 ends, being finished off when Bowl Movements held 3 on the penultimate end to take the lead 4-2, and they successfully held Rarebirdies to 1 on the final end to take all 4 points once again, joining Manning Up and the Bowled Guys on the maximum 8 points.

The Buffed Helmets got into the winners circle with a tiebreak win against the Great Bowls of Fire, another entertaining game between 2 former champion teams as the Buffs flew out of the blocks and won the 1st Set 13-2, but the Great Bowls hit back and led 6-1 with an end to play in the 2nd Set, then on the last end the Buffs loaded up the head and had at least 4 with a measure for 5, which could’ve drawn the set and finished the game, only for an unnamed player to move the 5th bowl thinking it didn’t count, so the game went to a tiebreak…

In which Mazey from the Buffs landed a toucher to all but deliver the knockout blow, but Todd stepped onto the mat and smashed the jack out of bounds, getting the re-spot on the T with the original shot bowl now 3 metres away and still holding, with our resident David Koch look-a-like having the last bowl with what seemed like a fairly simple draw to the T to win the game, but Todd fell victim to the lawn bowls equivalent of a 5-foot putt in golf, deciding not to play on the open forehand and instead crashing into the front rubbish on the backhand to lose the game.

The Buffs got the 3 points to jump into the Top 10, which leaves the Summertime specialists with a bit of work to do at 0-2, although they do have 4 points from their 2 tiebreak defeats, and on another note, Scotty was also proud to tell me that ahead of Valentine’s Day he’s got a new girl called Ele, who lets him get inside of her anytime… thankfully, he was only talking about his first generation Ford Falcon convertible nicknamed Ele:

The Unbelievabowls backed up their Week 1 victory with another win, defeating the B Cups 2 on Synthetic Rink 3 with a 6-1 win in the 1st Set, followed by a 4-4 draw in the 2nd Set as the B Cups second team salvaged a point from 1-4 down with 2 ends to play, unfortunately not being able to get a win for Jodie on her birthday, and for some reason I couldn’t find a decent photo of the game, so here’s a dodgy one from afar:

Finishing off with our new teams from Week 2, Blue Bowls (Brad, Josh and Clayton) debuted with a bang, giving Verse 1 an itch with a straight sets victory (9-3 9-5) on Synthetic Rink 7, a result that can happen with new teams from time to time as they come in with no exposed form for Handicapper Half Price to grade them on, and they produce a successful combination of semi-decent bowling ability up against less-abled opposition, such as Mick from Verse 1 prior to him having 3 pints of Guinness, and that result leaves Blue Bowls in a respectable 12th despite playing just the 1 game, while Verse 1’s long run of outs continues, now down in second-last having lost every game since Week 3 of last season.

And the last unmentioned game was the one between Salty Bowls and the Jack-A-Hacks on Grass Rink 1, and prior to the game the new, younger members of Salty Bowls received a demonstration on how to properly deliver a bowl from Scratch O’Brien, who himself has represented Manning in the lofty heights of 1st Division White:

While Duncan looked after the cast-offs in the Jack-A-Hacks, as he borrowed Pricey’s other set of blue bowls, and all in all it turned out to be a game played in good spirits as several players took the chance to pose for the camera and get in the review for Week 2:

As for the result, the experience of Duncan was the difference for the Jack-A-Hacks, who won the 1st Set 9-1, then trailed 1-4 with an end to play as it looked like the kids might just send the game tiebreak, but the Jack-A-Hacks had the powerplay up their sleeve and produced a big final end of 3 tuned into 6 to win the set and the game 7-4, as Pricey’s bowls once again finished close to the jack, once again showing that it’s not the bowls that are the problem, it’s the human bowling with them.

The other interesting part is that Wednesday night may turn out to be the only appearance the Jack-A-Hacks make in Manning Jack Attack, with the Chiko Bowls seemingly set to make a comeback and inherit their place in the field, so they’ll go out with a winning percentage of 100%.

Results

Note: Tiebreaks are not counted in score variance

Grass 1: Jack-A-Hacks (4pts +11) defeated Salty Bowls, 9/1 7/4

Grass 2: Buffed Helmets (3pts +10) defeated Great Bowls of Fire (2pts -10), 13/2 5/6 1/0 in the tiebreak

Grass 3: Macatac (3pts -3) defeated Shapes (2pts +3), 2/9 7/3 2/0 in the tiebreak

Grass 4: Bowl Movements (4pts +6) defeated Rarebirdies, 6/1 4/3

Synthetic 1: Los Jackobitas (3pts -8) defeated B Cups 1 (2pts +8), 1/12 6/3 4/0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 2: Sausage Bowls (3pts 0) defeated Bowling Stones (2pts 0), 7/3 2/6 2/0 in the tiebreak

Synthetic 3: Unbelievabowls (3pts +5) defeated B Cups 2 (1pt -5), 6/1 4/4

Synthetic 4: Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good (4pts +16) defeated Crawshaw CC, 6/2 14/2

Synthetic 5: Bowled Guys (4pts +7) defeated Rip It Up, 12/10 8/3

Synthetic 6: Manning Up (4pts +15) defeated Baby Got Jack, 11/0 9/5

Synthetic 7: Blue Bowls (4pts +10) defeated Verse 1, 9/3 9/5

Synthetic 8: Rock N Bowl (4pts +19) defeated Top Shots, 15/1 7/2

Ladder

Captain’s Comments

Chris, Los Jackobitas: “It was awesome!”

Ben, EBIG: “I would just like to confirm to Jason that we are not Bowl Movements… we EBOWLA BAD, IBOWLA GOOD”

Alex, Bowl Movements: “At least we play bowls better than Jason can read”

Bruce, Bowled Guys: “Craig (Rip It Up) played very well, a couple of times in the 1st Set we had numbers and he either drew shot or cut down, one end he trailed the jack from 5 down to 4 up on the power play… what saved us was we had 2 6s in the 1st Set.”

Ellen from Macatac, having recruited the Sausage Bowls: “I know how to pick em.”

Duncan, Jack A Hacks: “The young guns put in an effort and absolutely found the rhythm of the bias… and Pricey’s bowls were on song, don’t know why he struggles so much with them.”

Simon, Manning Up: “Trav had a practice bowl, it was a beautiful bowl that touched the Jack… only problem was, it was on the adjacent rink… and it wasn’t a wrong bias either!”

Mark, Manning Up: “I think instead of the Spider Challenge, we put James ‘Fat Jack’ Jackson in the middle of the green.. we can call it Fat Jack Attack!”

John, Manning Up: “Our opposition couldn’t have bowled better and got less of a result, also well done to the Jackobites on the greatest comeback since Lazarus”