The Tregew team from Porthleven Bowling Club are the West Cornwall 2014 Short Mat Triples Champions.

The team, captained by Roy Smith,  also includes fellow skip Ian Perry, along with Anne Perry and Paul Murphy playing No. 2, and Pauline Saben and Bob Burgess as lead bowlers.

The team had a reasonable start to the season and then hit form to move up the league table, reaching the top spot with just four games of the season to play.

The last two games were very close but the team fought hard and retained first place.

Roy, Ian, Anne and Pauline are all experienced bowlers, with Roy featuring in the team since its inception, but Bob is in his first year and Paul only his second. Putting these two inexperienced bowlers into his team was quite a risk for Roy, but it proved to be an inspired decision. 

The Triples Competition is split into three parallel leagues, and all three league leaders should have played a round robin championship decider, but unfortunately the Tolcarne team from Penlee Bowling Club were unable to field a team on the relevant day, and so it resulted in a final, deciding game between Tregew and the Lidden team from Penlee Bowling Club.

The game was held at the neutral St Ives Bowling Club. Lidden won the toss and elected to take the first mat. Tregew went into an early lead on mat one, playing against the Lidden team of Alan Fowles, Gerry Hewitt and Keith Williams.

On mat two the Lidden team of Mike Richards, Margaret Williams and Malcolm Furneaux went into a four shots to nil lead before Tregew started scoring but led by their skip Ian they responded well and by the midway point Tregew were leading 10 shots to 6.

Meanwhile on mat one the early Tregew lead had been lost and gradually Lidden pulled ahead by 3 shots. It became clear that the two teams were fairly well matched and it was almost predictable that the match would be decided on the last ends, and so it transpired. On mat 2 the teams were level after end 14 and so went into what was in effect a last end shootout which Lidden won by 2 shots.

On mat one there had been 2 killed ends so they were still playing when the other game was concluded.

Amazingly Tregew were 2 shots ahead on the fourteenth end and so the two skips knew that whichever team took the last end would be the champions.

End 15 produced a very tight head and with only one wood each left both skips needed to visit the head to decide who was holding shot and work out the best strategy.

Although well played, neither of the last bowls changed the situation and Tregew scored two shots to take the game and confirm the team as overall winners.

The nail biting finish made for a quite magical end to a wonderful display of bowling. The Tregew team members were, of course, elated to have triumphed, but the Lidden members were also in good spirit.

Their disappointment at losing was tempered by knowing they had been in a good-natured, tightly contested match with some brilliant bowls played by both teams.

And so the Triples League drew to a close after the obligatory tea and coffee kindly supplied by the ladies of St Ives Bowling Club.

As area chairman, Ian Perry thanked all that had taken part in the last match and thanked St. Ives for their hospitality.