Enthralling end to Open Men’s Pairs
Men’s Pairs
Powerhouse pair Aron Sherriff and Sean Ingham defeated Dean McWhinney and Dale McWhinney-Shillington 21-14 in the semi-finals while Matthew Lucas and Chris Le Lievre defeated Scott DeJongh and Dean Smith 27-24. A thrilling final ensued with nail-biting climaxes throughout, not least when the score was 16-12 in Lucas and Le Lievre’s favour and Sherriff scored four in the final end to boost the score to 16-16. The crowds were enthralled as Lucas held shot and the final score settled at 19-16.
“I feel top of the world now but 20 minutes ago I was sweating bullets,” Matthew said.
“You know you’re never safe playing against Aron.
“I got a bit worried as with the particular set of bowls I was using, as soon as the jack went down the other far end, there wasn’t much of a draw line there for me so I was having to overplay a few things and guess a little bit.
“We played good enough to hang in there and had a little buffer which was great.
“I’m super proud of Chris for his efforts, right the way through and his quality was really solid upfront.
“It was fantastic.
“Tonight we’ll have a couple of quiet ones as we’ve got the singles tomorrow.”
“It feels pretty good,” Chris said.
“I’m stoked for Matty too because things are a little different for me being a New Zealander and I don’t have any aspirations to play for Queensland.
“But for him it’s great, he’s in the state side so a result like this probably solidifies his position.
“Although it got a bit tough during the sectional play, we have probably never both gone off at the same time so it was fine.
“Usually with eight bowls, one of us has played something good, we’ve never fallen apart with all eight bowls which is great.
“I’m playing in the singles tonight so I won’t do anything crazy to celebrate but the first couple of sips of this beer tasted good!”
