At the halfway stage of the Short Mat Bowls Winter Season, there are clear leaders in each division.

In Division 1 the defending champions, Woolhope A, have a 20-point lead at the top with Weston-under-Penyard A and Larruperz A leading the chase, although their realistic ambition may already be the runners-up spot.

The Lea have an eight-point gap to bridge to get off the bottom of the division, although they do have a match in hand to those directly above them, where there is a group of six teams only separated by nine points.

Dewchurch Warriors have finished between third and fifth place in each of the last five Division 2 seasons, but they go into the second half of this season with an 11-point lead at the top.

Weston-under-Penyard B and Gorsley Chapel are locked together trying to deny Dewchurch their long-awaited promotion spot and then there is a large gap to a clutch of 6 teams separated by a mere three points.

The first three county qualifying competitions for the National Championships took place last week and Ross clubs produced two of the three winners. The Singles discipline produced a thrilling final which went to an extra end after Woolhope’s Becci Cox narrowly failed to pick up the jack for victory in the final regulation end before Ross’s Shaun Jones won the extra end to secure a National Finals spot.

The Ross team of Ian Park and Ian Roe followed up with a win in the Pairs discipline after an unbeaten run through the competition and a clinical performance in the final to once again consign a Woolhope team, this time John Mills and Anthony Rogers, to second place.

In the inaugural Over-55s Pairs competition it was Aston Ingham, in the form of Terry Darrington and Rita Hancock, who took the automatic finals place, leaving Tony Vitale (Larruperz) and Ian Park (Ross), along with the runners-up in the other disciplines, awaiting the allocation of national finals places to find out whether they will contest the finals in April.