Our new-look Balcomb Trophy and Walker Cup events were held on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 May with play at 16 venues across England, providing the opportunity for 700 of the country’s top players to compete at the highest level of inter-county bowls.
We’d like to thank all host clubs and officials for their support both in advance and across the weekend – a tremendous effort by a superb team of volunteers.
Bowls England was made aware following conclusion of play at Oxford City & County BC of a potential discrepancy in the final result of the Walker Cup group stages that had been held at the venue.
Leicestershire and Oxfordshire had tied at the top of the table on points, but the ‘live’ table showed Leicestershire had a better shots difference across the weekend’s matches and were announced as group winners. However, Oxfordshire made representation that the table was incorrect and that they had a greater shots difference.
Investigation showed that the discrepancy was due to an auto-formatting error on one line of the spreadsheet being used to record the results. In order to resolve the matter, we have now reviewed the signed scorecards from all of the matches held at Oxford City & County during the event and can confirm the final positions as below:
| FINAL | P | W | D | L | F | A | S/D | Pts | Position |
| Oxfordshire | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 264 | 229 | 35 | 63 | 1 |
| Leicestershire | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 251 | 232 | 19 | 63 | 2 |
| Berkshire | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 246 | 251 | -5 | 51 | 3 |
| Buckinghamshire | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 225 | 251 | -26 | 33 | 4 |
| Northamptonshire | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 255 | 278 | -23 | 30 | 5 |
Oxfordshire therefore progress to the Aviva National Bowls Finals, with the final stages to be held on Saturday 17 August at Victoria Park. We apologise to Leicestershire for the mistake, which was simple human error.
To minimise such an occurrence from happening in the future, we shall undertake a review of the result sheets being used and introduce the additional measures below as a further ‘check’:
- Provide all host venues with a match-by-match summary sheet
- Ask Team Managers to report to the Tournament Office at conclusion of each match to complete the summary sheet together with the Tournament Co-ordinator at their venue
- ‘Sign off’ the summary sheet, which will then be used:
– to populate the results system
– as an aid to every Team Manager to maintain their own records during the event/s
– as final evidence in case of any future disputes
These procedures will be implemented for the Amy Rose Bowl and White Rose Trophy on Saturday 31 June and Sunday 1 June.