South Western teams come away victorious at Statewide bowls championships at Emu Point over the weekend

South Western took out the 2024-25 title at the annual men’s WA country inter zone round robin fours competition at Emu Point Bowling Club at the weekend, the zone’s first win since 2019-20. The zone won all three rounds, defeating the Northern zone by 26 shots in the first round, Eastern by 20 shots in round two and Southern by a narrow eight shots in the final round to maintain their unbeaten weekend. South Western finished with six match points and nine rink points to defeat Eastern (four match points, nine rink points) and Northern (two match points, five rink points), while hosts Southern were fourth with zero match points and seven rink points. The winning South Western team is made up of bowlers from Blackwood, Leeuwin, Murray District and South West. The four country zones incorporate bowls leagues from the North Midlands down to Albany and Esperance. The inter zone competition travels around between the zones each year, so in 2025 the Southern zone will host both the inter zone and inter league competition weekends. The Statewide competition hasn’t been in the Great Southern for four years, and Emu Point Bowling Club president Len Brown said it was great to see it back in Albany. Mr Brown said the competition fostered a great weekend of country bowls. “It was a great weekend of competition, we had perfect weather all weekend and there was some great bowls being played,” he said. “Plenty of people came out to watch so it definitely caused some interest in the local bowls community.” The Southern zone, consisting of players from Central Stirling, Great Southern, Lower Great Southern, South Central Arunga, South East Coastal and Upper Great Southern, went down by small margins in all three rounds. In the first round, the Eastern zone took the game by four shots, Northern, the competition’s defending champions, won by six in the second, and the eventual winners South Western managed to finish the game eight shots ahead. However, Brown said it wasn’t all doom and gloom as one of the Southern zone teams, skippered by Emu Point’s Matthew Mitchell, was one of only three teams of four to win all of their rounds on the day, keeping the Southern zone right at the leaders’ heels. “The country all stars team was also selected from this competition and we were proud to have four Southern zone players selected for the team, three of them from our Emu Point club,” Brown said. Mitchell, Stephen Tuffley and Paul Garbellini, who made up the Southern zone’s star team over the weekend along with Brown, as well as Albany’s Craig Hitchcock, were selected to play in this year’s country week competition, which will take a team of regional players to Perth in February for the annual metropolitan vs country game.