Townsend Bowls Club completed a convincing 103-52 win over Chesham in the London and Southern Counties Shield.

Three of the four Townsend rinks won their matches, with the top rink, consisting of David Day, Roger Potter, Peter Armstrong and John Godman, earning a 27-10 success.

The other home rink, skipped by Danny Macro, consisted of Jason Hall, Laurie Rackham, and Gary West and won 22-13. The third winning rink played away at Chesham, comprised Peter Thomson, Robbie Ransted, Dave Houghton and skip Simon Gilbert, recording a 29-19 victory.

Townsend made hard work of their match against Shire Park in the Top 11 before prevailing 18-17.

It looked like plain sailing for Townsend with both Andrew Briden, in the singles and Macro in the two wood singles winning their matches. Briden won 21-9 and Macro 21-2. With only one more point required from the pairs, triples and fours, the end result looked assured.

However this was far from the case, as the pairs, behind from the second end never bettered their opponents, and the triples, after 12 of the 18 ends, were 17-2 down. It seemed that the fours were Townsend`s best bet for the deciding point but they also were finding the going tough.

The most unlikely of sources was the triples, who were fighting hard to avoid an embarrassing scoreline. Skip Simon Gilbert drew in to make two on the 13th end, the mat was taken up and a minimum length jack thrown.

From then on the home team changed gear and scored ten unanswered shots over the subsequent four ends, to be three shots down with one end to play. Yet another short jack resulted in Townsend holding three and the final wood of that final end made for the most unlikely end score of 18-17 for the home team.

The winning triples were Peter Thomson, Hall and Gilbert.

The first midweek match pitted five triples of Townsend against Clarence Park but the end result failed to convey the number of very close matches that occurred.

Visitors Townsend won 82-50, and 5-0 on rinks but no less than four of the matches came down to the final couple of ends, with winning margins of 15-11, 15-12, 12-11 and 13-11.

The one exception was Townsend's top rink, of Barry Robinson, Robbie Ransted and skip Laurie Rackham, who inflicted a major victory on their opponents, leading 15-1 at half way and winning by 27-5.

Townsend's midweek team also welcomed Redbourn, with a similar clean sweep result of 4-0 on rinks in favour of the hosts. The total score was 98-23, with the top rink accolade going to John Oakey, Mike Cowell and Janet Metcalfe.