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Before we begin, a big thanks to the following people for their work throughout the season – Richard ‘Half’ Price, the Simon to this Garfunkel, the entire bar staff for enduring copious amounts of hours cleaning pints and wine glasses, Alison Millington and her crew of kitchen volunteers, Dangerous Dave Nester for allowing us to use D Green, Peter Bowden for his bar vouchers throughout this season, and to our various assistants (Led by Adam Mac) for their general assistance with all things bowls!
They say all good things must come to an end, and that was exactly the case down at Manning Memorial as the Spring 2024 edition of Manning Jack Attack reached Finals Week, bringing a close to what has been another competitive edition of the Greatest Social Bowls Competition Between Manning Road and the Canning River, and if there’s a better Jack Attack competition in Australia, then I haven’t bothered looking at it.
In case you’re unaware of the format, Finals Week is very simple – The major prize money finals are 1st vs 2nd (Manning Up vs Bowl Movements), with the winners earning a place on the coveted Manning Jack Attack trophy, which has since been updated… although, Half Price did give the wrong year of Macatac 2’s title victory (Summer 2024) to one of the engravers, so we now have two Summer 2023 winners:
We also had 3rd vs 4th (Rock N Bowl vs Bowled Guys), 5th vs 6th (Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good vs Great Bowls of Fire) and the 7th vs 8th final (Sausage Bowls vs Unbelievabowls) was added to the list thanks to some bar vouchers from our great supporter Peter Bowden, with the remaining teams playing off in ladder order, with the only double-up fixture being Blue Bowls vs Verse 1 (Who played in Week 2), and the teams in last and second-last (Salty Bowls vs Top Shots) play off to get their names engraved onto the Wooden Spoon trophy by John McGinn from Manning Up:
While the winners get a roll of toilet paper, because if you finish last, then you’re crap, and if you finish second-last you’re close to crap, and what’s close to crap?
Toilet paper.
In fact, this week marked 5 years since we awarded the first Close To Crap award to Full Beer Sculls, although back then it was called the ‘Close To Shit’ award, before the pandemic kicked in 3 days later and sent us back to the Dark Ages, so it was toned down and called the Close To Crap Award.
As for the prize money, with the inclusion of 7th and 8th, plus Pricey giving a generous, the winners for this season got $200, runners up got $150, 3rd place $100, 4th $80, while 5th through to 8th all got bar vouchers courtesy of Manning’s resident mastermind Peter Bowden, with 5th receiving $70, 6th $60, 7th $50 and 8th $40.
There was also the small matter of the final tally for the Plugger The Pig Wrong Bias donations for this season, and after some generous donations at the presentation, the final tally we received from our kitchen master Alison, after a recount, was $285, smashing last season’s figure of $200 – A big thanks to everybody for your donations and owning up to paying a lack of attention to where the bias was, the proceeds will once again be going to the Cancer Council.
Now, on to the story:
The Spider Challenge
Week 6 kicked off with the last of the Spider Challenges for Summer 2025, and in a season in which we had the mother of all viral Spider Challenge videos, it was another wild edition of the Spider Challenge, as 70+ bowls were sent down, one bowl was wicked and nearly trailed the jack before it was moved twice, and as it turned out the winning bowl was going absolutely nowhere near the head, then by sheer dumb luck it was clouted by an incoming bowl, changed trajectory, the Red Sea parted and it just kept on rolling and rolling and wobbling and wobbling until it became a resting toucher for the shot, one of the rarest occurrences in a Corner To Corner, made all the more remarkable by HOW it got there:
After realising who the bowls belonged to, the winner was John from Manning Up, which turned out to be quite the the omen for Manning Up, and the runner-up prize went to Mazey from the Buffed Helmets:
You will notice that John didn’t bowl with his trademark green Mustang bowls, with his reasoning being that he didn’t want to lose any chips from his bowls with the maniacs that drive in the Spider Challenge.
Fair enough.
The Overall Night
On a night that threatened rain that didn’t arrive until Thursday afternoon to wipe out Thursday pennants, we shall start with the important result of the night, the WINNERS of the Grand Final on TV Rinkside, earning the title of Champions of Challenger Avenue….
Manning Up!
The great part of this year’s Grand Final was that we were guaranteed a first-time champion of Manning Jack Attack, and this time around it was Manning Up who completed their Cinderella comeback after a dire 2024 calendar year in which they scored 14 points across 12 games, and it was the culmination of some 6 years of hard work from John McGinn, in which time his teams have been known as Barking Owls, Hooting Dogs, S.cool Dads, Tiebreak Turkeys, and finally Manning Up since Spring 2021…
But at long last, after several Top 4 finishes and a runner-up result to the Great Bowls of Fire in Summer of 2022, John and his team of micromanagers have finally done it, completing one of the most successful single seasons that Manning Jack Attack has ever seen, as they were unbeaten in 6 games with 22 out of 24 points, and a record variance of +80 shots, a record that will take some serious toppling, and to steal a line I used 3 years ago when they were runner-up, Manning Up are a great example of team building in community sport, as they came from nothing, they got to something, went back to nothing, and then became something…
In fact, their line-up tonight (If you include Brent as the non-playing sledger) was the exact same 6 members as when they finished runner-up 3 years ago.
I will also thank John for his kind gift courtesy of his partner Tonya, who produces custom-designed iced cookies as part of her company Onya By Tonya, and after previously gifting us a set of cookies for the Summer 2023 competition winners, this time around she whipped up a quality set of lawn bowls and a jack… I assume 2 of those bowls cookies were wrong biases.
So that means the runners-up for the second time were Bowl Movements, and I feel that Alex, Andrew, Bernie, Nikki, James, John, Paul, George and Ringo should hold their heads high considering circumstances had conspired against them, as Andrew was made to skip in place of Alex despite a serious knee injury that required surgery as early as last week, and Alex (Who had played every game this season) wasn’t due to fly in on Wednesday night until 7pm, only to make it into Perth Airport at 6pm, join the Uber line when it was 50 deep, and get to Manning Memorial in time 5th End of the 1st Set in some kind of Herculean feat, although momentum had well and truly gone against Bowl Movements by the time he got to Manning.
It was the most heroic effort to compete anybody had seen in the realm of sport since Mick Doohan turned up on a gangrene leg at the 1992 Brazilian Grand Prix trying to save the 500cc World Championship… of course, Mighty Mick still lost the championship in that race, so it’s an apt comparison.
As for the game, it was a fair bit tighter than the scoreboard suggested, as Andrew managed to stifle Manning Up’s 1st End powerplay from 4 down to 1 up, and opened up a 4-0 lead after 3 ends, but the sheer consistency from Manning Up saw them hold 5 on the 4th End to grab the lead, which they held on the last end to win the set 6-4, and continued to build that lead in the 2nd Set until they led 9-0 heading into the final end of the game, which was a double powerplay to give Bowl Movements a sniff, but Manning Up loaded up the head and were never in danger of losing, but if it was last bowl wins, then Andrew got the chocolates, as he drew in a deadset pearler from the wide hand and landed a toucher to go from 2 down to 1 up, which became 2 on the powerplay, making the 2nd Set score 9-2.
I would note that across all 12 rinks, that was the last bowl of the season, and it was a toucher.
Going on to the 3rd vs 4th playoff between Rock N Bowl and the Bowled Guys, it was the resident chrome domes who got off to a hot start and held 4 on the opening end, going on to win the 1st Set 11-4 after holding 2 (Doubled to 4) on the double powerplay final end, and they did hold another 5 on the opening end of the 2nd Set, but that didn’t stop the set from becoming an arm-wrestle, as Rock N Bowl hit back and led 6-5 after 3 ends, the Bowled Guys held 3 to lead 8-6 on the double powerplay final end, and some good defensive bowls from the Bowled Guys restricted Rock N Bowl to just 1 shot, which became 2 to draw the set 8-8 and end the game there and then – The Bowled Guys (Bruce, Jamie, Craig and Rede) claimed the bronze medal, leaving Rock N Bowl (Luke, Belinda and Jodie) to finish 4th this season:
Still, Rock N Bowl weren’t totally winless on the night, because prior to the final week, myself and Half Price came to a clear consensus that the recipient for this season’s Mitchell Trophy as the best & fairest player would be Luke ‘The Nuke’ from Rock N Bowl, as his performances from Weeks 2 to 5 were nothing short of exceptional, playing as a skip and lifting Rock N Bowl to 15 out of 16 points in those 4 games, and even if the finish to the Week 5 game was a heartbreaker, it was his play that gave the team a chance of making the Grand Final in the first place.
Bravo and congratulations to Luke, and it was a decision very well received by the Jack Attack crowd.
Next up was the 5th vs 6th game between Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good and The Great Bowls of Fire on Synthetic Rink 3, and it was much the same outcome as the 3rd vs 4th game, with EBIG leading 8-5 with an end to play after holding 1 on their powerplay, but Todd, Jonesy and Paul Alphabet saved the best for last, deploying the powerplay and inflicting maximum carnage with a full hold of 6 on a powerplay, the Jack Attack equivalent of an 8 Badge in pennants, winning the set 17-8, then in the 2nd Set, EBIG once again built a lead and led 5-1 with an end to play, and once again Todd held off the powerplay until the last end, and once again the Great Bowls did the damage by holding 2 (4) on the powerplay to draw the set 5-5 and seal the win.
So the Great Bowls took 5th place for this season thanks to some devastatingly good powerplay bowls, leaving EBIG to claim 6th place…
And in celebration of a great season, Todd, Loose Bruce and Brad from Blue Bowls managed to steal a photo with the Jack Attack trophy, although considering those 3 are involved it’s more accurately the Wrong Bias Trophy:
The last of the Money Finals was the 7th vs 8th game between the Sausage Bowls and the Unbelievabowls on Synthetic Rink 2, one of the more straightforward finals as Sausage Bowls led right from the start, winning the 1st Set 9-1 and finishing off the 2nd Set by coming from behind to win it 5-3. securing 7th place after a wonderful season that saw them take out both of last season’s Grand Finalists against all expectations, while the Unbelievabowls rounded out the Top 8 for this season, which was still a marked improvement after missing out in recent seasons.
The last major game for the night was the Wooden Spoon game between the Top Shots and the winless Salty Bowls, and we worked out prior to the game that the combined age of the three O’Brien kids from the Salties is 52…
While the combined age of the four Top Shots (Jerry, Irene, Gordon, Leslie) is 283.
In light of this statistic, Jerry has announced that next season, the Top Shots will be known as The Jerryatrics.
As for the game, it was a great clash between the geriatrics and the whippersnappers, with the Salties recording their first set win of the season 5-2, the Top Shots responded with a 10-1 thrashing in the 2nd Set to set up an epic tiebreak to decide the wooden spoon, and with the Jack being hit several metres back, the Salties were able to draw the shot and win the game, claiming the toilet roll for being Close To Crap, while the Top Shots were condemned to join the list of Wooden Spoon winners… most of them being teams featuring Sharyn from B Cups.
Finishing off the last games for Summer 2025:
– On any other night, Baby Got Jack would’ve claimed top prize as the biggest overall winners with their straight sets +15 shot win against B Cups 1 on Grass Rink 4, which was a fair bit quieter than usual as Sharyn was unavailable due to a case of the spicy cough, a great shame that we didn’t get to see her square off against nephew Alex.
So Baby Got Jack finished off the season with a hat trick of victories, and if they can stop getting into that vicious cycle of losing games early and coming good at the end of the season, they’ll have a chance in October.
– The Blue Bowls vs Verse 1 game on Grass Rink 2 was the only repeat fixture of the Summer 2025 season, and it was a repeat in every sense of the word, because the result was the exact same as it was in Week 2, with Brad and the Blue Bowls winning in straight sets despite Ronni’s best efforts, and by sheer chance, that was also the Blue Bowls’ first win since that Week 2 game… It was also good to see Brad read Half Price’s email that our Week 6 dress theme was Loud and Colourful, which earned them a bottle of Pepperjack Cab Sauv as a prize.
– Macatac finished off a down season with a straight sets win against B Cups 2 on Grass Rink 1, a good contest as the team in pink gave a good account of themselves against one of the better teams going around, and despite the straight sets result it should be noted that both sets had margins of 1 shot going into the last end, with the B Cups leading 3-2 in the 1st Set, only for Macatac to hold 2 shots and claim the set right at the last moment, and the 2nd Set saw the Maccers lead 4-3 with an end to play, and it was a bit of a wasted final end powerplay from Macatac because they only needed 2nd shot to win the game, but they did their job and got 2nd Shot… of course, they also got THE shot and held 2 to make 4 on the powerplay and win the 2nd Set 8-3, sealing 9th place as the best of the non-money teams.
– Unfortunately for Crawshaw we ran out of Jack A Hacks this week to field a team against Wilko and friends, but thankfully there’s that many people in the Crawshaw crew that they played a game amongst themselves, and it turned out to be a high scoring game as all 4 powerplays in the game were converted, with Crawshaw winning the 1st Set 11-7 after only giving away 2 (4) on the last end powerplay, and the last end of the game saw another ‘Jack Attack Badge’ as the Hacks were up 1-9, but Crawshaw deployed the powerplay and picked up a full house of 12 shots to seal the win, although by that point in the night they were probably trying to avoid a tiebreak so they could crack open a bottle of wine.
– Los Jackobitas kept up the theme of massive powerplay holds against the Rarebirdies on Synthetic Rink 1, as their 1st Set was deadlocked at 3-3 with an end to play, but Chris, Andreas and Catalina would have one of their finest moments of the season by holding 5 on the powerplay to make the set 13-3, and they led 4-0 after 2 ends of the set, but the Rarebirdies carded a pair of Albatrosses, including one on a powerplay, to win the 2nd Set 9-5 to send it to a tiebreak, but even as I was standing over on D Green, I could hear Catalina scream with delight as Los Jackobitas won the tiebreak, and Chris, the man from the homeland of golf, defeated a team full of golfers.
That also means Los Jackobitas finished on 4 wins from 6 games this season, which is nothing short of outstanding teamwork considering Andreas and Catalina hadn’t even picked up a lawn bowl before Week 1, but it turned out that Week 1 34-shot drubbing from Manning Up was one of the great form references for this season, as Manning Up won the title undefeated, while Los Jackobitas held themselves together, learned the ropes courtesy of Chris, and won 4 out of their next 5 games.
Very good to have Chris back this season, he’s always keen as mustard for Jack Attack.
– This time last season the Shapes were drubbing the Bowling Stones in a Grand Final, but this time around they found themselves in a game for pride against the Buffed Helmets on Synthetic Rink 6, and with nothing to play for Craig decided to wield the axe at the selection table, with last season’s Mitchell Trophy winner Peter, and Tristan getting dropped to the ‘reserves’, so Ben came in to play alongside Pierre and Craig…
It didn’t make much difference, as the Buffs added to the pile of big powerplays by holding 8 on the last end of the 1st Set to blow it out to a 14-5 win, but the 2nd Set was much tighter as both powerplays were stifled, and ultimately the Buffs did enough as they defended a 4-2 lead on the last end, ultimately dropping 2 shots to draw the set 4-4 and end the game… in fact, the bigger game at stake for the Buffs on Wednesday night was the Buffed Helmets Burger Challenge between Carry and Carmo, in which the winner got a free lunch courtesy of the loser, and the winner by default was Carry, as Carmo couldn’t keep his bowls on the rink.
To quote Scotty, the burgers are better at Carmo Jacks.
Which means the last game we haven’t mentioned for season Summer 2025 was the game between Rip It Up (With the Coopes back from Bali) and the Bowling Stones on Synthetic Rink 7, as the Stones had one last chance to avoid a winless season, and they once again got off to a good start as they won the 1st Set 7-1, then they got 4-0 ahead in the 2nd Set before the yips kicked in, Rip It Up went on to hold 3 (6) on their powerplay to take the lead, then the Stones got them back by holding 2 (4) on their powerplay to take the lead 8-6 with an end to play, only needing to get 2nd shot to kickstart the fireworks…
Still, you can tell why I finished that paragraph the way I did, because Rip It Up picked up 3 shots to win the set 9-8, sending the game to a tiebreak, and the Stones couldn’t pick themselves up from the floor to get up for the tiebreak, as Rip It Up landed 4 shots to win the game, condemning the Stones as the only team who didn’t win a game this season, only a few months after finishing as the runners-up.
Still, the Stones did claim at least one win this season, and that was winning the Merv Roberts World’s Unluckiest Bowlers Award, given to the team who lose the most tiebreaks in a season, and the Stones have now set some kind of unwanted record with 4 defeats from as many attempts.
And on that note, on behalf of myself and Half Price…
Results
Grass 1: Macatac (4pts +6) defeated B Cups 2, 4-3 8-3
Grass 2: Blue Bowls (4pts +7) defeated Verse 1, 7-2 5-3
Wooden Spoon Game: Salty Bowls (3pts -6) defeated Top Shots (2pts +6), 5-2 1-10 1-0 in the tiebreak
Grass 4: Baby Got Jack (4pts +15) defeated B Cups 1, 12-0 6-3
Grass 5: Crawshaw CC (4pts +8) defeated Jack A Hacks, 11-7 13-9
Synthetic 1: Los Jackobitas (3pts +6) defeated Rarebirdies (2pts -6), 13-3 5-9 1-0 in the tiebreak
7th vs 8th: Sausage Bowls (4pts +9) defeated Unbelievabowls, 8-1 5-3
5th vs 6th: Great Bowls of Fire (3pts +9) defeated Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good (1pts -9), 17-8 5-5
Grand Final: Manning Up (4pts +9) defeated Bowl Movements, 6-4 9-2
3rd vs 4th: Bowled Guys (3pts +7) defeated Rock N Bowl (1pt -7), 11-4 8-8
Synthetic 6: Buffed Helmets (3pts +9) defeated Shapes (1pts -9), 14-5 4-4
Synthetic 7: Rip It Up (3pts -5) defeated Bowling Stones (2pts +5), 1-7 9-8 4-0 in the tiebreak
Final Ladder
Captain’s Comments
Wilko, Crawshaw CC: “My kids keep telling me I’m not very bright, they’re right, but at least my clothes are loud.”
Mazey, Buffed Helmets, referring to his teammate Carry: “You’re like Carmo without the cash!”
Chris, Los Jackobitas: “Aye carumba!”
Alex, Baby Got Jack: “A good season, in November it’s coming home”
Jerry, Top Shots: “We’ve changed our name… next season, we will be the Jerryatrics“
Todd, Great Bowls of Fire: “Another great season, a good game against Ben and Lee, the difference was the power plays went our way… sometimes Webowla Bad, tonight Webowla Good.”
Alex, Bowl Movements: “Great season, thanks to Jason and Half Price… judging by the result I probably should’ve stayed on the plane, then there was 50 people waiting for an Uber!”
Bruce, Bowled Guys: “Another good competitive game against a real good team in Rock N Bowl, and good to get on the right side of the score and grab another podium finish.”
Brad, Blue Bowls: “After 6 weeks we finally exploded for a win.”
John, Manning Up: “We played some damn good teams this season, Macatac and Bowl Movements included, and once we built up that all round effort we became more consistent, and that’s what it was for all 6 weeks – A great team effort, and a credit to Brent for turning up late and playing his role, the momentum certainly changed after he arrived.”
John, Manning Up: “This season’s Manning Up RAC award goes to Trav in Week 2, when he didn’t bowl a wrong bias, but took so much grass that he nearly took the jack on the next rink.”
Coopes, Rip It Up: “Back from Bali, back in the winner’s circle against the young Manning mums, and to come back and win in a tiebreak”
Categories: Lawn Bowls
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