THE rink of Dave Matthews, Kevin Lee, Steve Remington and skip Chris Cheesley were Westlecot’s saviours as the club held on to beat Rivermead by two shots in the Wessex League.

Despite the Old Town club leading overall across the board during the entire game, they only finished this east region group match by taking honours on one rink against the Reading side.

Cheesley’s quartet recorded a superb 38-20 success which included a match-winning six on the 21st and last end.

Their 18-shot success managed to cancel out the losses suffered by the rinks skipped by Tom Pittuck (one shot), Kyle Anderson (two shots) and James Nobbs (13 shots).

Westlecot made a rapid start and led across the board 24-8 at five ends and 44-28 at 10, but then Rivermead cut the deficit to 59-50 at 15 and 73-65 at 18.

And then in a final surge the Reading side almost snatched victory as they got to within two shots of their opponents.

Westlecot collected 10 points out of a possible 16 for the victory - eight for the overall shots win and two for Cheesley’s lone rink success.

That keeps them in fourth place in the table and gives them a chance of reaching the play-offs as they have a game in hand on the top two clubs, Loddon Vale and Carterton.

At home Westlecot made the best possible start against Rivermead with Cheesley’s rink leading 10-0 at five ends and Tom Pittuck’s four 9-0 up.

At 10 ends Cheesley had increased his advantage to 21-7 while Pittuck led 14-4, but then the fortunes of the two rinks changed dramatically.

Cheesley moved 26-13 clear at 15 ends then swapped counts of five to lead 31-19 at 18 and grabbed a match-winning six on the last end.

From being 18-4 up at 12 ends, Pittuck’s rink only scored a single in the next nine ends but conceded 16 shots to lose 20-19, dropping a single on the last end.

In Reading, Nobbs’ rink struggled throughout.

They were 11-2 down at 10 ends and 16-5 adrift at 15 and eventually lost by 13 shots.

Anderson’s quartet were involved in a tight match for the entire 21 ends.

They led 7-6 at 10 ends but were 11-9 down at 15, before recovering to lead 13-12 at 18. However, in the last three ends they scored three shots and dropped six to lose 18-16.

  • WESTLECOT Indoor Club supply almost half of the Wiltshire county side for today’s inter-county championship match in the Liberty Trophy.

Eleven members of the men’s section at the Old Town Club have been chosen to face Somerset in the second round tie at North Wilts IBC in Chippenham this morning.

The rest of the 24-strong squad is led by North Wilts with six players, while Christie Miller (Melksham) have four representatives and Five Rivers (Salisbury) supply the other three.

Eight of Westlecot’s representatives combine to form two separate rinks - the first comprises of Paul Kistle, Denis Holborow, Kevin Embling and Ian Jefferies (skip), while James Nobbs, Chris Cheesley, Steve Remington and skip Neil Smith feature in the second.

In another rink Josh Cottle, Hedley Bowen and Dave Snell (skip) are joined at lead by Alan Greenland from North Wilts.

This season Wiltshire beat Gloucestershire 135-121 in round one of the Liberty Trophy to set up the Somerset clash.

Despite the victory the Wiltshire county selectors and team manager Smith have made four changes to the side.

Bowen and Cheesley plus Justin Davis and Keith Hutchens (both North Wilts) come into the side in place of Dale Hayward (Christie Miller), John Buckland (North Wilts) and Michael Titcombe Jnr (Westlecot) who all switch to the reserves’ bench.

Having lost to Somerset in the early rounds of the Liberty in the previous two seasons, Wiltshire will be looking for a turn in fortunes today.

The Somerset team includes 10 players from the Clarrie Dunbar club (Frome) - five of whom have played outdoors for Wiltshire in the summer in the Middleton Cup, inter-county championship.

  • THE ladies’ team at Westlecot is the only side from the Old Town Club still running in a national inter-club team championship competition and they play today in the Yetton Plate.

They went out in round one of the main Yetton Trophy event 76-59 to MidGlos but have taken their second chance with both hands in the Plate.

In round two, Westlecot came from 16 shots down at the halfway point with a strong second-half performance to beat Gloucestershire side Cotswold 86-77.

Westlecot move into the last 32 today and meet Avon Valley (Lighthorne, Warks).

There are numerous positional changes to the side that beat Cotswold but only one different player, with Maureen Rogers coming in at lead to replace Linda Clarke who switches to reserve.

WILTSHIRE men were beaten in their first friendly of the 2014 season as they suffered a 14-shot loss against Dorset.

Under the stewardship of county indoor president Keith Baker (Westlecot) they led for the first half of the match at North Wilts, but faded in the latter stages as they were defeated 131-117.
Wiltshire led 28-24 at five ends across the board and 59-52 at 10, but later trailed 89-85 at 15 and 109-102 at 18.

Rink honours were shared at 3-3 with Dave Williams and Alan Small’s fours recording 15 and 13-shot victories respectively.

Maurice Byron’s quartet were 22-9 up at 18 ends but eventually won by just four shots.

However, these scores could not compensate for the six-shot loss by Ron Salsbury’s foursome, the nine-shot defeat by Martin Salter’s quartet and the heavy 31-shot loss suffered by president Baker’s rink.

Wiltshire’s next two friendly games are home matches at North Wilts against Somerset and Gloucestershire on January 12 and 18 respectively.