World Indoor Bowls Junior Championships

At Jim Baker Stadium, County Antrim

Ellie Dixon (Norfolk Island) and Angel Gomez (USA) have enjoyed mixed fortunes in the above event today (MON), but are relishing the experience of playing the sport they love on the world stage.

In the morning session, they made a slow start, but hit back in the second set, though it was the Switzerland/Ireland pair of Larrisa Rubin and Daniel Spratt who got home, 11-2, 6-6. They gained credit – but, sadly, no points – for tying the second set.

When the singles started, Dixon again started slowly, but was pleased to notch up a revenge 3-6, 9-3, 1-0 over the Swiss girl (Rubin), but Gomez was well beaten in straight sets by Ben Harvey, a Channel Islander from Guernsey, who returned a 12-1, 11-5 card.

Things looked up for the Californian in his next match, when he took on – and defeated – young Irish star Adam Rankin. Gomez won the first set, 7-5, and drew to the jack consistently in the second set, scoring one vital shot to tie the set, 6-6, on the very last end. A very commendable victory.

In her second match, Dixon pushed Guernsey's Catherine Snell all the way, before the Channel Islander got home on a tiebreak

DAY ONE – MONDAY, 5 DECEMBER

While one World Cup plays out in Qatar, another global event got underway in Northern Ireland today (Monday) when 24 of the world’s best young lawn bowlers converged on the Jim Baker Stadium, which is the home of the County Antrim Indoor Bowling Club.

The International Indoor Bowls Council (IIBC) World Junior Indoor championships are being staged in a surprisingly rural setting, a mile or so from the tiny village of Parkgate (population 647), in a building that could well be a cowshed, but which, like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, proves to be bigger – and more exciting - than it looks.

The competitors, who hail from fourteen countries, are all 25 or under, and have their sights set on three world titles – men’s singles, women’s singles and mixed pairs. And it is delightful to see top bowling countries, like the ‘home nations’ and Australia, playing alongside relative newcomers to the sport, like Hungary and Switzerland

Thrown in ‘at the deep end’, Australia’s high-flying duo of Brianna Smith and Nick Cahill, coached by reigning women’s world champion Karen Murphy, opened their bid for the mixed pairs title with a convincing 9-3, 11-1 victory over top England internationals, Ruby Hill and Harry Goodwin.

The Aussies were immediately installed a favourites to win the title, though an experienced local pundit insisted that Hill and Goodwin had played well. “The English pair did nothing wrong,” he said, ”It’s just that the Aussies were out of this world!”

Sarolta Schrank and Mate Dobos, members of the burgeoning Hungarian Bowlsport Federation that embraces all forms of rolling-ball sports, did well to win

the second set at a canter, but it was Guernsey’s Catherine Snell and Ben Harvey who got home on a tense tiebreak, 8-4, 1-10, 1-0.

“We don’t even have proper bowling greens in Hungary,” admitted Dobos. “We play on what you in the UK would call short mats, and we also play bocca, and other similar sports. It’s a great experience being here, and playing at this level.”

At the end of Day One, six players – Harry Goodwin (England), Daniel Spratt (Ireland), Kara Lees (Scotland), Yu Yee Sin (Hong Kong), Shauna O’Neill (Ireland) and Ruby Hill(England) - were unbeaten after two rounds of the singles.

But the shot of the day was delivered by Israel’s Shira Eshal, who faced a match lie when she delivered the last bowl of the sudden death one-end tiebreak. Her inch-perfect delivery clipped Lauren Gowen’s shot off the face of the jack to beat the Welsh star, 3-7, 9-4, 1-0..

DAY TWO – TUESDAY, 6 DECEMBER

Only three players – home hopes Daniel Spratt and Shauna O’Neill, and England’s Harry Goodwin – remain unbeaten after four rounds of men’s and women’s singles at the Junior World Bowls Championships at the Jim Baker Stadium in County Antrim.

With just one round left to play tomorrow morning (WED), the high-flying trio are certain to make the knockout stage, and, if they top their groups, will be fast-tracked through to the semi finals.

Players who finish second and third in their section league tables will play off for the remaining semi final places – and competition is fierce for the chance to progress in this prestigious tournament.

Spratt, who is only 17, dropped only one shot against Canada’s Owen Kirby this morning (MON) as he returned an impressive 12-1, 10-0 scorecard, but he had to work hard to beat Welsh hope Ben Matthews, 6-3, 7-7.

O’Neill, who plays for the Ballybrakes indoor club in Ballymoney, won a silver medal for Ireland in the European championships in the summer, when she also represented Ireland in the Commonwealth Games. She came through unscathed yesterday, beating England’s Ruby Hill, 6-6, 5-3, and Channel Islander Catherine Snell, 7-3, 9-1.

Goodwin, who has played most of his bowls in Devon, but now lives in Kent, scorched to a 14-1, 12-2 win over Californian teenager Angel Gomez, then pulled off a crucial straight sets (10-3, 6-2) win against Ireland’s 21-year-old Adam Rankin, who is a Ballybrakes clubmate of O’Neill.

Overseas stars Brianna Smith, from Sydney, and Yu Yee Sin, from Hong Kong, are sitting pretty at the top of their women’s singles league table with three wins apiece. Handily placed just behind them are Welsh hope Lauren Gowen and British junior champion Kara Lees, from Scotland, who will be aiming to make the cut to the knockout stage.

Spectators are looking forward to tomorrow’s mouth-watering clash between Smith and Gowen, which the Welsh player needs to win to get through to the play-offs. Lees knows her chances depend on her getting past Israeli Shira Eshel.

In the men’s singles, there is a tasty clash between the top two players in Group A, with Goodwin facing a challenge from Hong Kong’s Chow Ho Yin, who goes by the name of Jason, while, in Group B, talented Scot Bradley Buchan, from Fraserburgh, currently in second place, is hoping to get the better of combative Canadian Owen Kirby, who is breathing down his neck.

The home countries have stamped their authority in the mixed pairs, where, with one group round left to play, England (Ruby Hill & Harry Goodwin), Ireland (Shauna O’Neill and Adam Rankin), Scotland (Kara Lees and Bradley Buchan) and Wales (Lauren Gowen and Ben Matthews) seem to be in control, joined by Guernsey duo Catherine Snell and Ben Harvey.

But many pundits are forecasting that the talented Australians Brianna Smith and Nick Cahill could upstage the Brits and walk off with the title. The Aussies, who showed their hand when they crushed England in their opening match, were in irrepressible form today (MON), when they scored 66 shots and conceded only six.

DAY THREE – WEDNESDAY, 7 DECEMBER

The calculators came out at the Jim Baker Stadium in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, today (WEDNESDAY), and there were furrowed brows when 24 of the world’s best young lawn bowlers nervously homed in on places in the knockout stages of the World Junior Bowls Championships.

In the early morning session, Australia and Scotland finished on top of their respective mixed pairs leagues, and were rewarded by being fast-tracked through to tomorrow’s (THURSDAY) semi finals.

In Section A, the high-flying Aussies, Brianna Smith and Nick Cahill, kept their unbeaten record intact and completed their round robin with a fine 14-1, 7-4 win over scratch pairing Larissa Rubin, from Switzerland and local hope Daniel Spratt.

In Section B, Kara Lees, the British junior women’s champion, from the Abbeyview club in Dunfermline, and Bradley Buchan, from Fraserburgh, lost their unbeaten record when they were pipped on a tiebreak by Hong Kong’s rising stars Yu Yee Sin and Chow Ho Yin, who returned an extraordinarily lop-sided 8-5, 0-16, 1-0 scorecard – but the Scots still topped the group.

The second and third teams in the league tables were required to play off for the remaining places in the semi finals, and, as luck would have it, in both Sections, the pairs concerned were faced with the prospect of a swift re-match.

Thus it was that England’s Ruby Hill and Harry Goodwin, who had beaten Guernsey’s Catherine Snell, 9-1, 7-3, in the morning, returned to the green to face the Channel Islanders again, while Welsh stars Lauren Gowen and Ben Matthews, who had pipped Ireland’s Shauna O’Neill and Adam Rankin, in a 8-7, 4-4 thriller, had to repeat the feat if they were to make progress.

Hill and Goodwin made no mistake, chalking up a 12-2, 5-4 straight sets win over Snell and Harvey, but O’Neill and Rankin needed a tiebreak to get past Gowen and Matthews, 8-2, 3-8, 1-0.

In today’s semi finals, Hill and Goodwin will face Scots pair Kara Lees and Bradley Buchan, while O’Neill and Rankin come up against Aussies Brianna Smith and Nick Cahill.

The home crowd had plenty to cheer as Ballybrakes clubmates Shauna O’Neill, a silver medallist at the European outdoor championships in the summer, and Daniel Spratt, from Belfast, a promising footballer, who is only 17, swept into the semi finals of the men’s and women’s singles.

Spratt, who plays outdoors for the prestigious Belmont club, kept his unbeaten record intact, though he showed signs of nerves in his 9-3, 6-7, 1-0 win over Namibia’s 18-year-old Ronan Olivier, while O’Neill slipped up for the first time this week, losing to Ellie Dixon, who represented Norfolk Island in the Commonwealth Games in July.

Harry Goodwin, a Kent-based Devonian, also came through unbeaten in his men’s singles group, guaranteeing him a place in tomorrow’s semi finals, but players from Australia and Hong Kong made sure that the event did not turn into a home countries monopoly.

Hong Kong’s exciting prospect Yu Yee Sin, who is 24, finished on top of her women’s singles group, with Australia’s Brianna Smith in second place, while Aussie Nick Cahill and Hong Kong’s 19-year-old Chow Ho Yin finished second and third in their men’s singles group, and will do battle tomorrow morning for a place in the semi finals.

Tomorrow, then, Smith and Scotland’s Kara Lees will meet for the chance to play O’Neill in one semi final, while England’s Ruby Hill and Norfolk Island’s Ellie Dixon lock horns to see who will meet Yu in the other semi final.

Meanwhile, in the men’s singles, Cahill and Chow will be battling over the right to play Spratt, while Scotland’s Bradley Buchan and Welsh international Ben Matthews meet to decide who will take on Harry Goodwin.

DAY FOUR – THURSDAY, 8 DECEMBER

With three separate world junior championship titles – men’s singles, women’s singles and mixed pairs - up for grabs at the Jim Baker Stadium in County Antrim, and with each competition down to the semi final stage by Thursday morning, there were three countries who still had their sights set on a notable clean sweep.

The host nation, perhaps not surprisingly, was in contention, as was England – but it was the professionalism and style of the Australians, with their smart green’n’gold uniforms, and bright yellow bowls, that marked them out as the most likely to achieve a monopoly for the titles.

Brianna Clark, who plays for the St John’s club in Sydney, and Nick Cahill, a member of the legendary Broadbeach club on Australia’s Gold Coast, accounted for Irish hopes Shauna O’Neill and Adam Rankin, 14-1, 9-9, in the semi final of the mixed pairs, and stayed on course for the clean sweep.

England’s Ruby Hill and Harry Goodwin also kept their hopes alive, and qualified for the final, with a 10-5, 6-6 victory over Scottish duo Kara Lees and Bradley Buchan, though it was only a late surge of four shots over the last two ends that gave them the tied they needed for a 1.5-0.5 win.

The mixed pairs final that brought the day to a close was notable for its topsy-turvy nature, with the Aussies dominated the first set, and the English pair in command in the second.

Having scored only one shot in the opening set, Hill and Goodwin claimed a full house of six shots on the first end of the second set, and kept up the pressure to guarantee a tiebreak sudden-death shoot-out, which may not be what the players would choose, but is always a hit with spectators.

The scorecard – showing that Hill and Goodwin won, 1-14, 12-3, 1-0 - may suggest that the sets were ludicrously one-sided, but, in reality, there was some superlative play in both sets, followed by a tense and highly competitive tiebreak in which the England duo just had the edge.

England’s chances of a clean sweep disappeared earlier in the semi finals of the women’s singles, when Hong Kong’s Yu Yee Sin edged home against Ruby Hill, who, after losing the first set in eight ends, fought back bravely to force Yu into a tiebreak. Yu prevailed, 9-4, 6-9, 1-0.

The diminutive 24-year-old Yu, a product of the prolific Hong Kong Youth Development Scheme, will now face Brianna Smith in (FRIDAY) final, after the Aussie foiled the hopes of home supporters with a desperately close 7-5, 8-7 victory over Shauna O’Neill, from the Ballybrakes club in Ballymoney.

Australia’s Nick Cahill had his work cut out to beat Ireland’s 17-year-old Daniel Spratt, who put up an impressive display. Until recently, Spratt was on the books of the prominent Belfast football team, Glentoran, but opted out in order to concentrate on bowls. Cahill was glad to get home, 7-5, 8-7.

In the men’s singles final, Cahill will – for the fourth time this week – come face to face with England’s Harry Goodwin, who plays for the Swale club in Sittingbourne in Kent, but who learnt to play bowls in Devon, where he came under the influence of World Champion of Champions title-holder Sam Tolchard.

Goodwin was pushed all the way in a thrilling semi final contest by Scotland’s Bradley Buchan, who hails from Fraserburgh. Shots were hard to come by, and there was only one brief occasion when the gap between them was more than two shots. Goodwin was relieved to return a 6-5, 8-7 scorecard.

Now, of course, no-one can perform that mythical clean sweep – England could win two titles, and so could Australia. But no-one should write off the chances of a certain Hong Kong starlet, who will do her best to derail Brianna Smith in the women’s singles final.

In a short ceremony, the trophies for the finalists in the mixed pairs were presented by IIBC President Peter Brill, from Wales, and World Bowls Chief Operating Officer Gary Smith.