finished as runners-up in 2025, masterfully took out the reigning champions, 28-10, in the opening round of the new 2026 competition on Sunday.
The 2026 Championship Bowls competitions have gotten underway at the Cobar Bowling & Golf Club and a huge upset was recorded in the opening round of the Fours competition.
In a replay of last year’s final, the team of Doug Hudson, Michael Sargent, Don Roberts and Kyle Roberts extracted their revenge and took out the 2025 Fours Champions, Jay Egan, Paul Kershaw, Mark Fraser and Alec Fraser, in a masterful way to finish as 28-10 winners.
The 2025 champs saw the writing on the wall early in the match and, despite a late fightback, they could never get themselves back into contention.
For three-quarters of the team—Jay Egan, Mark Fraser and Alec Fraser, the previous day’s result was a much better one, when they won their Triples match.
They bowled well from the start to run out big 24-8 winners over their opposition of Glenn ‘Kiwi’ Ratcliffe, Peter ‘China’ Brien and Shane Carter.
There were also three games played for Social Bowls on Sunday.
Rink 10 had Jim Goonrey and Rory Dunlop up against John Goonrey and Peter ‘Skeet’ Goonrey with Team Dunlop getting the win 28 to 10.
Rink 12’s match was a fours game with the players getting in some Pennants practice.
Allan Knight’s team finished with a convincing 33-11 victory over Craig ‘Duck’ Grimmond’s side.
Rink 13’s triples game finished with Russell Brosi’s team getting the win over Randall Hall’s team 21 to 12.
The Golfie’s Pennants bowlers are off to Condobolin this weekend for their return match and the Cobar players will be hoping to turn around the 2-1 loss they suffered to Condobolin a fortnight ago in Cobar.—The Jack
