Obituaries

Neville Edwards

Neville was one of our founders helping form the league in 1994 through his calm and respected manner. He was first Chairman of the league before becoming President in 1997. He donated the League Averages trophy which we still present now, and was an ever present at the Presentation Evening until 2022 to present his trophy.

John Coxill

John Coxill has served this league for the last 25 years, being a key member in creating this league back in 1994. He was our first ever President when the league started, serving from 1994-96. He played for Cravern Arms from 1994, when he won 7 games, to 2004, his best year for them being 2000 when he won 14 games. He remained loyal to them, but they dropped out of the league in 2004 due to a lack of players. He moved to Ford the year after, having his best season in 2007 when he won 12 games, and again stayed loyal to them until they folded in the winter of 2012/13 due to a lack of players. The club went in 2014 because of development, a sad loss to the bowling world of Shropshire, so John moved to Bylet for one season in 2015, playing 11 games. Since then he has gone to Meole Brace and played in their tanners team since.

He won our doubles in 2004 with Peter Griffiths, in the first year of the competition.

He has been county president in 1990, 1997 and 2014. He became competitions secretary in 2008, and also our president in 2016 again for two years.

Phil Clee

Helen & Phil Clee were Results Secretaries from 1999 to 2012 doing a great job of collating all the results in that time and then emailing or faxing them over to the Fixtures Secretary Mark Burroughs so he could place them on the website. Some nights they had to stay up till midnight trying to get a result when a club had forgotten to “ring it through” much to their annoyance! They also had to email/fax the results through to Shropshire Star over that time, providing people with results on the Saturday morning, long before the internet was widely available.

They have both been members of Wrockwardine Wood over the league’s time. Helen having held many roles there such as treasurer for as long as I can remember! Phil played nearly 500 games for them between 1994 and 2017, winning just below half of those. He was best winner in the Pool B final in 2001, as well as helping them win the trophy in 2000 and 2006. He was the Chairman of the club, and played a big part in the club getting the second green, as well as helping others laying the green. He also maintained the greens for a number of years. We sadly lost Phil recently, so I ask his children Stuart & Sally Clee to pick up his certificate on his behalf.

Peter Roden

Pete helped get the league off the ground and up and running after they both had the idea of a County league that had failed a few years earlier. He helped formed a “Document for Change” with Andy and Malcolm to be given out to clubs and leagues and this helped break down the barriers that some leagues had regarding change. He was given a donation from the league for all of the hard work and travelling he had done to spread the idea around the county. He became our first Competition Secretary in 2005 when the post was first created, for three seasons. He, like Andy and Ian, started at Donnington Wood in the league, but moved to Wrockwardine Wood for two seasons in 1996 and 1997. However he had two poor seasons there, so moved back to Donnington, where he remained till 2003, winning two Alan Mayhew Trophies with them. He also was best winner in the 2001 Pool B final to help them win that trophy. He moved to Bowring with his son Rob and helped try to get them in the league. But their path was blocked by St Georges’ second team, and he helped the club make the brave decision of replacing the ladies they had in their team with youth, and it paid off as they won the 2008 Mid Shropshire League They comfortably beat his former club Donnington Wood in the final, and played a part in the team every season until 2018, when he moved closer to home and played at Trench.

Dave Astbury

Jeff Hutchinson

Jeff was involved in the very early rumblings of a county league, attending the meeting in 1990 at Old Shrewsbury. He suggested another idea to hopefully persuade leagues and clubs to join, but this didn’t go much further. However when the idea was resurrected in 1993, he attended the meetings again and was the Mid-Shropshire representative to try and persuade the league to let their clubs join. They did this pretty quickly at their next committee meeting. He wrote to the county advising them of the league starting and what they were doing in order to create it. The league appointed him vice-chairman for the first season too, showing how important they valued his input. He still remains a supporter of the league, attending matches when he can, and played 12 games for Sir John Bayley, 11 of them coming in 1999.