2012-03-01

It was not a good start to 2012 for the West Midlands in division one of the BDO Inter County Championships, their first fixture of the new year and going into the second half of the season they had the long trek north to take on a strong County Durham team.
There were mixed fortunes for the Saturday teams as the ladies suffered their first 6-0 whitewash of the campaign. Sarah Allen got the ball rolling for the hosts, being pushed all the way for her close 3-2 win by Samantha Maiden. Sarah Gil made it 2-0 with her straight 3-0 success against Jackie Maiden. A draw was the worst possible scenario for County Durham after Mandy Prout beat Doreen Kaye 3-1, but that was not to be as both Teresa Brookshaw and Sue Shepperd chalked up 3-2 wins over their opponents Jacqui Simmons and Kim Fellows. Rounding off the 6-0 win was Nikki Furse, who added her 3-1 win over Lisa Maiden to the tally.
The men’s ‘B’ continued their win, lose, win lose pattern with a tremendous 8-4 victory.
Leading off for the Midlands side was John Platt, who beat Michael Scown 3-1. Mark Watkiss had a similar 3-1 experience against Ian Hambleton to open up a 2-0 lead. Stephen Hayes was County Durham’s first winner, a close 3-2 verdict over Dougie Thompson and with a further 3-1 win from David Gill against Louis Burley it was back to level pegging at two each.
Ryan Herrington restored the away teams advantage when with a 3-2 result defeated John Dowd and the two games buffer was put back in place when Avtar Singh registered a 3-1 win over David Brown. Unfortunately the two games win sequence rose its head yet again and the hosts cancelled out West Midlands 4-2 lead with wins by David Dodds, 3-1 over Ian Stanton and David Brown, 3-0 against Glen Cullen.
For the third time in the match West Midlands took the lead, this time thanks to a 3-1 win from Lance Hackett over Gary Taylor. Then came a string of 3-2 wins all in favour of West Midlands. Providing the wins were man of the match Paul Price, with a 27.30 average, Viv Gould and Greg Parkes beating in turn Jimmy Summers, Ian Adamson and David Milburn to give West Midlands a superb 8-4 victory.
Sadly it was another black day for the ladies on Sunday as the ‘A’ side, like the ‘B’ were handed their first whitewash of the season. The opening two games went to the wire with Margaret Stewart and Allison Wells just getting the 3-2 edge on Claire Hobbs and Heather Wright. Jenny Summerson made it 3-0 with her 3-1 win over Lisa Astbury before Kirsty Hutchinson sealed a Durham win with another 3-2 result, this time at the expense of long serving West Midlands player Diane Tolley, Hutchinson taking the home teams match award with a 26.37 average.
Haron Haywood moved the score along to 5-0 when she accounted for Kim Fellows with a 3-1 margin and Angela McDonald completed the rout when she won 3-0 against Kath Jenkins in the final game to give a 6-0 result to County Durham.
The men’s ’A’ team had played four and only lost once, in their previous home game against Cornwall, a close 7-5 result and were looking for a quick return to winning ways. Andy Forrester gave them a good start when he won 4-2 against James Forster. Forrester was followed by the evergreen Ian Jones, who with a straight 4-0 win over Paddy Lenagh made it two consecutive man of the match awards with his 29.91 average. Another Ian, this time Stanton extended the visitors lead to 3-0 when he won a close 4-3 tussle with Keith Gowland before Kevin Naughton opened County Durham’s account. Playing against the previous day’s award winner Paul Price, Naughton won the tie 4-1.
The fight back by Durham was short lived as Dean Stewart inched his way to a 4-3 win over John Hardman to make it 4-1 in West Midlands favour. Then cam the home teams best run of the game, two in a row, first Phil Nixon beat Jamie Hughes 4-1 and with a 4-0 win from Alan Bell against Matt Dicken, suddenly Durham were only trailing by one game at 4-3, and with five to play were well and truly back in the match.
West Midlands were afforded a little more breathing space when Mark Rollinson got the better of Paul Clark with a 4-2 scoreline and when Danny Coyle beat Gerry Hall 4-1 West Midlands, at 6-3 up were in a much more comfortable position requiring just one more win from the last three games to clinch victory.
The tenth game was a seven legs thriller which could have swung either way, but in the end it was Durham man Stephen Knight who grabbed the glory to keep his tem mates in with a chance of a draw. Robert Douthwaite increased those odds when he beat Greg Parkes 4-2 and suddenly a West Midlands win was not looking so promising.
The final result could not have been stretched out any further than what it was as the last game of the weekend went to the very last leg before a result was decided. Fortunately that close 4-3 verdict went to West Midlands Richard Platt, with Stephen Annan just losing out. The final score being 7-5 to the West Midlands, however, the overall result was a 21-15 victory for County Durham which lifted them into second place in the promotion table on 108 points, twelve behind leaders Cornwall. As a result of the defeat West Midlands drop into the bottom three with 91 points, just nine more than Derbyshire who are second from bottom. West Midlands should be in a good position to climb up the table from here on in as the remaining four fixtures sees them take on teams around them, Dorset are the only team in the top half of the table and they are on the border in fifth place. The remaining games are against Bedfordshire, London, Dorset and Derbyshire.