PURTON’S magnificent trio of Chris Mitchell, Julie Jones and skip Alison Fail lifted British Isles Women’s Bowls Council Championships triples title at Belmont BC, Belfast.
The Wiltshire team won last season’s Bowls England ladies national triples championship at Royal Leamington Spa to earn the right to represent their country in Northern Ireland.
Purton had a bye in the preliminary round of the triples on Friday in Belfast but then were drawn against Scotland in the semi-finals.
They led 6-0 after five ends but only 7-6 after being pegged back at 10 and then fell behind 9-8 at 13.
Purton upped their game with a tremendous finish winning ends 14-18 scoring 10 unanswered shots to beat Scotland 18-9 and claim a place in the BIWBC triples final against Wales who had beaten Ireland 18-10.
On Saturday In the final the first half of the game was extremely close with Purton and Wales tied 5-5 after five ends and 10-10 at 10 ends.
Purton then dropped a three on the 11th end but never looked back from this point winning the next six ends with a run of 1-5-2-2- 4-1 to lift the BIWBC triples title with a crushing 25-13 victory over Wales.
England only won two of the five championship titles contested over the weekend in Belfast. Besides Purton’s success the other victory came in the pairs from the mother and daughter partnership of Sue Alexander and Ellen Falkner, who had beaten Wiltshire’s Sue Cooke and Alex Jacobs (Box) in the national pairs final at Leamington in August last year.
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