Gavin returns to winning ways

Great result: Steve Hayes, Rosscarbery Bowling Club Chairman, presents the winner’s prize to Gavin Twohig after Saturday’s intermediate tournament final victory.

GAVIN Twohig returned to winning ways with a hard-earned intermediate tournament final victory at Rosscarbery on Saturday.

Opponent David Hubbard, Beal na Morrive, currently in junior ranks, was very much the outsider but more than held his own with the higher-ranked Twohig before coming 40 metres short in the final shots of an absorbing contest.

The Rossmore man has a very creditable success rating in tournament finals. He won two last year, one at Ballinacurra, Upton, and the Tim Foley Cup at Templemartin, but was coming to this decider on back of a few recent losses, most noticeably a six-metre defeat to Seamus Sexton in the Donoughmore Pat Barry Cup semi-final on Sunday week.

It took him a while to get going on Saturday last but when he did, in the shots from De Barra lodge, he showed blinding speed and no little accuracy.

These attributes were a big factor in thwarting the game Hubbard who, despite a sluggish start as well, forged into a handy lead with three exceptional efforts from the point known as ‘the beet field gate’.

The third of these, his eighth of the score, was a well-executed lofted attempt that wound around the double bends towards ‘Barry’s cross’. Twohig had work to do then but delivered excellent 11th and 12th shots to lead as they went level to the no-play lines at Cahermore cross.

The exchanges on the re-start were top notch with Twohig following Hubbard’s big effort to ‘Froe Cross’ and then making a decisive move with a superb 15th passing another big effort of Hubbard’s by 40 metres. The Beal na Morrive man’s next went right and he was caught for those vital metres in each of his last two. Twohig had the range to beat the finish line comfortably in 18 and claim the winner’s prize. The stake at issue was €900.