Taylor Support Shropshire Premier Bowls League
The Shropshire Senior Merit is being held for the first time at Newport Bowling Club, one of our former Premier League clubs. Below is a report on the clubs stay in our league from 2004 until 2022.
Newport have proved to be the most successful team this decade in Shropshire, winning the Premier League 5 times in a row, County Cup, Harris Cup and Pool A twice and the Alan Mayhew once. Their life started in the Shropshire Premier League in 2004 after beating Battlefield in the playoff at British Sugar (now Allscott) by 27 chalks at the end of the previous season. But they had a rocky start to life, finishing joint bottom in their first season in the league, but surviving by beating Archibald Worthington in a pre-playoff at Meole Brace, and finishing bottom again in 2007 but winning the playoff against Pontesbury at Allscott. This however started their revival, with Chris Grocott moving back from St Georges along with Dave Rhodes to help them move up to 9th(winning the most improved team) , 8th (winning the Pool B), 5th and then winning the league for the first time in 2011 with top players like Pete Farmer, Mick Jones and Kevin Keary all coming in, setting a record high points total for the league scoring 254 points. They continued to sign good quality players over the next few seasons and this has meant they were the team to beat in Shropshire, winning the Alan Mayhew Final in 2014 and 2015 after finishing runners-up in 2011, the latter by a single shot to Burway. They won the Pool A in 2012 and 2013 too. However they lost several players before the 2016 season and struggled into 9th place. They did however recover to finish 3rd in 2017, and then 2nd in 2018 as new players came in. Another 3rd place finish occurred in 2019, but the club didn’t compete in 2021 due to a lack of players. They managed to find new players in 2022, and narrowly missed out on a top half finish, finishing 8th. But a loss of players over the Winter of 2023 meant they had to withdraw from the league.
Individually Alan Davidson won the Individual Merit in 2005 and Peter Farmer and Mick Jones won the Mike Hinton Pairs in 2014. Scott Harries won the League Averages in 2014 and Pete Farmer in 2017 & 2018, whilst they have had a player winning the Most Consecutive Wins for three consecutive seasons; Pete Farmer in 2012 & 2013, Dale Rudrum in 2013 and Russell Pegram in 2014.