BAINFIELD'S indoor bowls season of pain in the A section of the Premier League continued at the weekend as they remain pointless after suffering a 70-63 defeat from Blantyre at the Hutchison Crossway stadium.
Last season's Scottish Cup winners have now gone four games without a win and, as that includes two home defeats, it signals relegation form approaching the halfway stage of the campaign.
"We are in real danger of slipping into a crisis and many w
ill argue that we are already there, however we are taking some degree of comfort from the fact that Lanarkshire and Paisley are just two points better off than us. And we still have Lanarkshire to play away and home and Paisley at home so there is hope that we can catch up and overtake them," said spokesman Paul O'Donnell.
The home form on Saturday against Blantyre was mixed with a good win for Stevie McLeod, a battling peel for Gavin Smith, and a narrow defeat for O'Donnell; but a heavy defeat for 48 times capped Robert Marshall made it a day to forget for him. The 7-end phase scoring shows Bainfield's inability to cope with the undefeated joint leaders of the section over the first two, being outgunned 26-18 and 31-24 before staging a late revival to capture the third, 21-13.
The end count is a frustrating statistic for the home side as they won that 41/38 giving them a 52/48 percentage of the match, however the Blantyre shots total was boosted by two counts of 6.
Marshall and his front-three of Neil Watson, Brian Stoddart and Jamie Gracie slumped to a 24-9 defeat from Iain McLean.
McLeod breathed some fire into the Bainfield challenge by skipping Craig Paterson, Stuart Patterson and Chris Steven into a 7-0 lead then, having lost a 6, from 7-9 to 17-9 before returning a good 22-12 win over Brian Irvine.
Smith skipped Craig Moss, Jamie McIntosh and Colin Hutchison to a hard fought 18-18 peel with Jim McCann having rallied from 3-12 to 12-4 then from 12-16 to 17-16. O'Donnell and his rink of Chris Downie, Darren Grant and Alan Brown came against the collar from 5-4 up to 15-8 down but they stuck to their tasking in a 16-14 defeat from the in-form Alex Kelly.
