[su_heading size=”24″ margin=”10″]2020 Australian Pairs — cold and smoky.[/su_heading]
Gold: Brent Jansen & Karen Heagle
Silver: Lee Millar & Louise Mason
Bronze: Andrew Harley & Pat Thomas
We all looked forward to the 2020 Australian Pairs tournament September 12-13, so much so that it was oversubscribed by 3:00 p.m. on the first day that registration opened.
No one warned us that the weather would be so different, though. For the 2020 Pairs in August, we reported “warm and sunny”; for the 2020 Australian Pairs, substitute “cold and smoky.” On day one of the tournament, nearby Vancouver was reporting “the worst air quality in the world.” On day two, Victoria Gonzales weather station reported 12o C throughout the tournament.
But Oak Bay bowlers are tough. We shivered and choked our way through it all. Face masks appeared in this one. Perhaps because the COVID pandemic is making us all more conscious of not breathing over others, but masks not only keep droplets in, they help to keep smoke particles out.
Brent Jansen and Karen Heagle won the tournament by the narrowest of margins, having won 21 ends compared to 20 ends won by the other three-game winners, Louise Mason and Lee Millar.
Andrew Harley and Pat Thomas looked like they could win three games also but had to settle for a catchup in the last end to tie the game, giving them third place.
Perhaps the best story of the day was raising $544.60 for the Child Amputee (CHAMP) program. Money was raised in three ways: part of the tournament entrance fees; the 50/50 draw; and members’ donations. We plan to make a similar contribution from the next tournament, the 2020 Scotch Pairs September 26-27.
Your reporter was in group two, the two-game winners. And his own games are really all he can report on. There were certainly dramas going on elsewhere as we could hear shots of encouragement and despair across the green. One game reportedly resulted in more than 40 points for the winner. Unfortunately no one took any photos to prove how dramatic their own games were.
Read on about how unfair play denied our pair its rightful place, or substitute your own three-act drama instead. . .
[su_spoiler title=”Unfair results . . .” style=”fancy” icon=”chevron-circle”]
I complained in the last report about the August 2020 Pairs, the first club tournament of the year, that my ruthless opponents in successive games had: attacked me with wild creatures; openly admitted to drug-assisted performance; and that I was even gaslighted (gaslit?) by an 11-year old.
In this tournament, games one and three went well for us. Our opponents in those games exhibited none of the unfair tactics we were victimized by in the first tournament.
We were even mentioned in dispatches after game one, when we won eight ends. In game three, thanks to Robert, who single-handedly achieved an 8-point swing in the eleventh end (five-down to three-up), we squeaked home by a single point.
Round two was a different story. . .
We actually won the first half of the second game, 4-3 and four ends out of six; and then we choked – and it wasn’t from the smog. Unfortunately, in the second half of the game there were several serious incidents of unsporting behaviour by our opponents. At the time, I was not familiar enough with the Laws of the Sport to cite rule 36.1.
“If an opponent . . decides that a player has deliberately committed an act designed to give them or their team an unfair advantage, they can appeal to the Controlling Body.”
For example, when our opponents scored as many as six shots in a single end, we let them enjoy their triumph undisturbed, as gentlemen do, i.e. we did not seek an unfair advantage. But when we dared to score multiple shots ourselves, someone on their side (who shall remain anonymous, but one of whose names begins with M, like seven other players in this 32-person tournament) repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly – three or four times at least, with her last bowl of the end cruelly and deliberately took away our advantage and unfairly turned it to her own. And, what’s more, her skip (one ‘B’ – there were 7 of those in the tournament) vociferously supported this egregiously unfair behaviour.
If I had been more familiar with the rules, I would have immediately notified the Controlling Body and had the final ignominious result (4-17 ☹) overturned. But as it was, we had to reconcile ourselves to being out of the medals.
[To all of you who also didn’t make the podium this time round, take Oscar Wilde’s advice, as I always do, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you place the blame.”]
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