ON TOP.

We were on top after winning the Manning Derby 6-0 on Halloween in Round 1, led by as much as 14 points prior to Christmas before being pegged back thanks to a variety of factors, held top spot all the way through to Week 17 before losing a tight aggregate at Cockburn in the last round to drop down to 3rd…

We then went on the road and defeated Cockburn in the Semi Finals a week later at Kardinya, came back to Kardinya a week later to face the Cats in the Grand Final, and after trailing by 11 shots at the halfway, soared over the top and won the flag 64-54 in a fantastic contest, capping it off by winning all 3 rinks away from home as Billy Fraser sealed the result with 1 end to spare by trailing the jack for 2 shots after being 5 down.

Manning 1 64 (6) defeated Kardinya 1 54 (0) at Kardinya

Skip: Billy Fraser, AJ Heal, Joe Angel, Jason Titheradge 22 defeated Danny Comrie, Matthew Ngui, Les Phillips, Michael Monteiro 19

Skip: Paul Smith, Darrel Hudson, Sam Perica, Nigel Rees 23 defeated Daryl Radford, Brett Taylor, Tony Cocodis, Peter Holmes 17

Skip: David Cliff, John Bowring, Phil Herbert, Andy Lill 19 defeated ‘Shark’ Mark Szczecinski, Craig Stokes, John Rochford, Mark Holt 18

Now there’s a recurring joke at Manning that you need country license plates to play Premier League for Manning, and the Thursday team is the living proof given it’s the one day of the week that bowlers affiliated with country clubs are allowed to play metropolitan pennants:

Billy Fraser (Quairading), Darrel Hudson (Dowerin), David Cliff & John Bowring (Brookton), Paul Smith (Mukinbudin), Joe Angel (Kalannie), AJ Heal (Beacon) & Phil Herbert (Nungarin)

And then you have Andy Lill being an Englishman from Preston, Nigel Rees from Wales, and the outsiders in Sam Perica and myself, although my brother-in-law Lewis is a Tammin native.