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After 7 months in hibernation, we were back and ready for the Spring/Summer 2025 edition of Manning Jack Attack, The Greatest Social Bowls Competition Between Manning Road And The Canning River, and a month out from the season we were thrown into…

ORGANISED CHAOS.

With D Green at Manning undergoing refurbishment until December, we were only able to use the Synthetic C Green this season, and I did go in thinking we would only have 16 teams (In fact I said as much on the Manning Jack Attack Facebook page), but in typical Half Price fashion he decided to improvise with John McGinn and create a format that would get more players involved with the one green for this season, so the format for Spring 2025 will be:

21 teams across 7 rinks, with 3 teams per rink playing a pair of 5-end games against the other team on their rink – One team stays off while the other teams play their game, teams get one powerplay per game, and there’s no tiebreak in an effort to save what little time we have.

The loss of D Green meant we did have to pull a South Sydney on a few teams, while some are missing for other reasons:

Last season’s runners-up Bowl Movements missed the cut-off for entries, or they just had other things going on and didn’t tell me, so we’ll just say they got abducted by a UFO and move on.

Los Jackobitas have mysteriously disappeared after team manager Chris was last seen at Bassendean Bowling Club on a Sunday afternoon in April, during which time he was accosted by a debt collector sent from Manning due to not paying his entry fee:

Also, no idea who that bloke behind us was, but I can only conclude that he wanted a drink.

The golfers from Rarebirdies are sitting out this season due to Peter having foot surgery and not being ready to go until New Year.

Macatac are focusing on pennants at Como… that, or the competition on a Wednesday night at Manning proved too much to handle.

While the good news is Spring 2023 champions Norfolk Enchants are back after their sabbatical, confirming what Quinny told us in an email back in January that the Norfolk Island team would be back, and Ten Pin, the oldest and longest serving team in Manning Jack Attack, are back after missing last season due to some health issues that needed addressing.

As for team name changes, the team formerly known as Verse 1 have switched from white wine to red wine and named themselves Pepperjack Attack, which I think they did change last year but myself and Half Price ignored it… Bowls Australia, if you’re reading this, there’s a sponsorship idea, right there.

And in keeping with his biannual team name change, young Alex has announced his new team name, named after one of the greatest one-hit wonders of the 1990s….. ayyyyyy JACKARENA!

The spelling is still to be determined, as it’s either Jacarena to be similar to the song, or Jackarena to keep the bowls theme.

As for the weather, it’s been inconsistent Spring weather in Perth of late… on Tuesday we get 33 degrees and sunshine, followed by 18 degrees and very cool on Wednesday night for Week 1, then Thursday and Friday we get rain.

Make up your damn mind, Spring.

The Overall Night

The loss of the tiebreak for this season means we do have a slight change to the points system, with teams still getting 2 points for a win, with 1 for a draw, but to cover the loss of the tiebreak we’ve introduced the bonus point for the teams that win their rink every week, so the maximum points per week this season will be 5 points instead of 4, which should also help with the countback system for weekly winners.

Starting off the top, the winners of Week 1 were the Bowling Stones, who comfortably took the Rink 2 bonus point with wins against B Cups 2 (11-1, thanks to 8 on the powerplay) and Salty Bowls (8-2), with B Cups 2 winning the consolation game against the Salties 10-1, with Wednesday’s results breaking a long drought for the Stones as they hadn’t won a game since Week 5 of the Spring 2024 season, although even that game was a walkover win, so it was their first proper win since Week 4 of the same season.

Needless to say, it had been a long Exile on Main Street for the Stones.

Finishing in 2nd on the night were Shapes, who took the Rink 3 bonus point win two wins against the Bowled Guys (7-3), then gave Norfolk Enchants a rude welcome back present when they pulled off a rare full count of 12 shots on a powerplay end to win 14-6, despite only holding 2 ends, with the Norfolkers and the Bowled Guys having to split the only remaining points with a 3-3 draw in the first game, giving the Spring 2024 champions a strong start after their premiership hangover last season.

3rd on the night went to Rock N Bowl, who got the bonus point for Rink 4 as they defeated Jackarena 9-1, then sat off during the second game (In which Jackarena defeated the Top Shots 7-4) and returned to defeat the Top Shots 4-2, and it was a win under duress as Luke and his team were understaffed with a player missing (Belinda Mac is in Europe at this very moment), but they did have some help from the other teams as Irene from the Top Shots played for them first up, and after Jackarena played their two games young Alex came in to help them out against the Top Shots… it was either that, or Alex wanted to try and lose a third game on the night and set some kind of Manning Jack Attack record.

4th overall went to B Cups 1, who got the Rink 1 bonus point with wins against Rip It Up (7-3) and Unbelievabowls (5-1), which gave Sharyn’s team the unique feat of being the only team to play in and win the first 2 games on their rink on Wednesday night, with the Unbelievabowls taking the consolation points against Rip It Up with an 8-2 victory, which was enough to get them into the Top 10 on the ladder after Week 1… Rink 1 was also very unfortunate, as they had at least 3 ill-timed touches on the jack that went unrewarded as I blew the whistle shortly afterwards, which led to Sharyn giving me a gesture that suggested they were holding 2 shots… I remain suspicious, as I didn’t see two B Cups bowls close to the jack at that time.

The only other team to claim all 5 points were the Great Bowls of Fire, who got the Rink 5 bonus point with some good tough wins against the Buffed Helmets (6-5 thanks to a toucher from Todd on a last end powerplay), followed by sitting out the second game (In which the Buffs defeated defending champions Manning Up 7-2) and returning to defeat Manning Up 5-3, which created the scenario of the Great Bowls winning the bonus point despite having the second-best shot variance on the rink (+3 versus the Buffs with +4), but they had the wins on the board, and I will say that Rink 5 was probably the most entertaining rink of the night, with the 3 teams all having been champions of Manning Jack Attack in recent years, and the quality was certainly there (Especially with Carmo not playing for the Buffed Helmets) with the three teams combining to get 4 out of the 6 toucher vouchers when I blew the whistle, and it appears that the Manning Jack Attack reigning premiers curse has already struck Manning Up, confirming that John’s part in changing the format for this season definitely didn’t favour his own team.

An interesting stat from the round robin format is that out of the 5 teams who won both games, 3 of them won the first game, sat out the second game then won the third game (Bowling Stones, Rock N Bowl and Great Bowls of Fire), while Shapes won the second and third game, and B Cups 1 won the first and second games.

It goes to show that little window for dinner and a drink is a good one.

Finishing off the results for Week 1:

Rink 6 was the only rink to feature all 3 teams with a win apiece, with Coral, Deb and Peter of Ten Pin defeating Ellen and Trudy’s Sausage Bowls 6-5 on the last end in the first game, followed by Sausage Bowls getting back to defeat Pepperjack Attack (Featuring Verse 1 stalwarts Mick, Peg, Ronni and Sally) 11-2, then Ten Pin featured in another last end decider, only to come out on the wrong side against Pepperjack Attack in a 4-5 defeat, which gave the Sausages the rink win and bonus point on shots up (+8 to 0)… it was probably a good thing for Ten Pin’s sake that we took out the tiebreak for this season, because they’d have added another 2 tiebreaks to their record total of tiebreak appearances at Manning, which I’m led to believe is north of 75.

And finally, Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good claimed the last of the bonus points on Rink 7, as Brad and his Blue Bowls set the early pace with a 10-0 shutout against Crawshaw CC, who were led by Disorderly Decca in the absence of Wilko, before EBIG came on and turned the screws on Blue Bowls with an 11-2 win, but the Crawshaw residents came back and jumped EBIG in the final game to lead 5-1 after 3 ends, but Lee, Xavier and Ben rescued a 5-5 draw by holding their last end powerplay, giving them 4 points from the night to sit in 6th spot, with Blue Bowls rounding out the Top 10 on shot variance, while Crawshaw are hanging out for Decca to give us another joke for the Captain’s Comments.

In all, 14 out of the 21 teams picked up at least 1 win from their 2 games, and the main takeaway from this night of change was the extra time added due to the format change, with 15 ends of play meaning we weren’t having the last rink off until 8:40pm (Usually it’s 8:10 in the normal format) – Needless to say, we will look at adjusting the start time in a fortnight after the Melbourne Cup break, especially with Week 2 also due to feature the first Spider Challenge of the season.

Results

Rink 1 (won by B Cups 1): B Cups 1 defeated Rip It Up 7-3, B Cups 1 defeated Unbelievabowls 5-1, Unbelievabowls defeated Rip It Up 8-2

Rink 2 (won by Bowling Stones): Bowling Stones defeated B Cups 2 11-1, B Cups 2 defeated Salty Bowls 10-1, Bowling Stones defeated Salty Bowls 8-2

Rink 3 (won by Shapes): Bowled Guys drew with Norfolk Enchants 3-3, Shapes defeated Bowled Guys 7-3, Shapes defeated Rip It Up 8-2

Rink 4 (won by Rock N Bowl): Rock N Bowl defeated Jackarena 9-1, Jackarena defeated Top Shots 7-4, Rock N Bowl defeated Top Shots 4-2

Rink 5 (won by Great Bowls of Fire): Great Bowls of Fire defeated Buffed Helmets 6-5, Buffed Helmets defeated Manning Up 7-2, Great Bowls of Fire defeated Manning Up 5-3

Rink 6 (won by Sausage Bowls): Ten Pin defeated Sausage Bowls 6-5, Sausage Bowls defeated Pepperjack Attack 11-2, Pepperjack Attack defeated Ten Pin 5-4

Rink 7 (won by EBIG): Blue Bowls defeated Crawshaw CC 10-0, Ebowla Bad, Ibowla Good defeated Blue Bowls 11-2, EBIG drew with Crawshaw CC 5-5

Captain’s Comments

John, Manning Up: “Not a good start in trying to avoid the premiership hangover”

Scotty, Buffed Helmets: “The Buffs are a much more cohesive unit without Captain Carmo trying to steer the Titanic into an iceberg”

Ladder