In their quest to win the prestigious title, the team competed against 15 zones from throughout the State.

In their first section they played zone 13 from southern Sydney.

They acquitted themselves well, winning two of the three rinks and recording a 9-1 win with a 12 shot margin.

The second game was against the strong zone 9 area from northern Sydney.

This proved to be much harder and the team suffered a defeat, winning just the one rink, to go down 1-9 with a 17 shot deficit.

As the team had to qualify in the top two in their section to progress to the quarter finals, this loss put them in the firing line to miss out.

The team responded well against zone 1 from the Far North Coast, winning on all three rinks, for a 10 win with a 22 shot margin.

This snuffed out any chance of the team being eliminated at this stage, and we had qualified to play last year's champions from the powerful Central Coast zone 15.

This match proved to be a real humdinger that went right down to the very last bowl.

The rinks, skipped by Col Morrison and Steve Harris, both began well and got out to early leads.

Experienced skip, Rex Johnston was doing it real tough, and just could not get going against the equally experienced John Roberts.

The masterboard scores fluctuated until, with about a 12 ends to go, zone 15 had edged ahead to lead by about 10 shots.

Col's rink then won their last four ends, scoring eight shots, with a three on the last end, to reduce the margin somewhat.

Steve's rink also responded, winning their last five ends, scoring 10 shots, with a four on their last.

This gave the zone 11 team a three shot lead with Rex's rink playing the last end, and Rex finding himself three down, with just the last bowl to play.

If we had to pick someone in our team to play a bowl in this situation, it would be Rex.

He didn't disappoint, trailing the jack to reduce the count to two, and we were through to the semis.

This was another daunting challenge against zone 2, the locals from Newcastle.

This proved to be a bridge too far, and although we battled hard, we could only manage a draw and two losses from our three rinks, and we went down by 23 shots.

So in the final wash-up, we played five games, for three wins and two losses.

The two losses we suffered were at the hands of zone 9 and zone 2, who were the two teams that reached the final, which was won by zone 9, 53-51.

A commendable effort from the rink of Bob O'Mahony, Barry Dixon, Noel James and Steve Harris, who had four wins and a draw from their five games.