Taylor Support Shropshire Premier Bowls League
As you can see below, Tom Roden has decided to step down after his year in charge as President, however we do have someone lined up to take over at the AGM.
Let me start by thanking our sponsor, Simon Parsonage of Flowfit. His support over the last few years has kept this the most competitive league in Shropshire and a highly regarded league nation-wide. I’m sure everybody associated with the Flowfit SPBL joins me in thanking him for his continued support and promotion of our game. Also thanks goes to BBranded run by Steve Reeves for his sponsorship of the SPBL Merit.
Next I’d like to congratulate our prize winners this year. Newport have set a new benchmark with 5 consecutive league triumphs and don’t look like giving up this run any time soon, although it was refreshing to see Ifton (2015’s most improved team) break into the top 3 of the league and further increase the pressure on the regular top 5 finishers. I wish Newport good luck in this year’s World Team Championships where they will represent Shropshire alongside Castlefields who won the 2015 County Cup.
Continuing with team triumphs, Sir John Bayley won the Pool A competition for the first time and Burway won the Pool B for a 2nd time after featuring in 3 successive finals. Thank you to Sir John Bayley Club for hosting the Pool A & B finals and the presentation night. Nobody can forget the nail biting Alan Mayhew Trophy final between Burway and Newport at Pontesbury, the latter winning by only a single chalk to successfully defend their title.
Congratulations to Stuart Rutter who won the SPBL Merit (John Coxhill Trophy) for the first time at Allscott BC beating Tony Rhodes in the final and congratulations also to Callum Wraight and Luke Jones who beat Paul Evans and Scott Simpson to lift the Mike Hinton Doubles Trophy at Sinclair BC. Everybody must be queuing up to become the next SPBL Treasurer & Secretary after Robert Burroughs’ transformation this year, the HUSC star man won both the league averages (Neville Edwards Trophy) and the most MVP awards to cap off a fantastic season considering how involved he has been behind the scenes as well as on the greens. Finally Nicky Jones and Rich Lawson shared the most consecutive wins award. Once again congratulations to all our winners this year.
The online presence of the league has taken a huge step forward in 2015. With the help of Lee Bowden we now have a new and improved website with some fantastic features. We are also present on Facebook and Twitter, reaching out to more people than we ever have done. A lot of this is down to Robert Burroughs’ hard work and long hours spent promoting the SPBL and I hope the league continues to grow and evolve as it did in last year. The Mike Beckett system that we use is easily the best around and we thank him for providing us with a fantastic results system.
Finally I would like to thank Mike Potter and Malcolm Fletcher. Mike has refereed and photographed most of our finals and is always exceptional and Malcolm continues to provide our league with great press coverage.
In 2015 I jumped at the chance to represent the league as its president and looked forward to joining Mick Jones, John Coxill, Martin Gaut and Robert Burroughs on the executive committee to help revive what some might have thought to be a stagnating SPBL and although I am very proud to have been involved with the changes made to the SPBL, I feel that the role of president should be taken on by somebody far more experienced than myself and with the time to fully commit to the leagues future progress.
I would like to someday be involved again with the leagues executive committee in a different role but now I feel it is right to stand down as president and wish Mick, John, Rob, Martin and the future President the best of luck for 2016.
Thomas Roden.