Sadly our midweek pennant 2nd side fell 5 shots short in their semi-final against a strong Armadale 4th side. The day, however, will be forever memorable due to the application of the BV heat policy. APBC 2 fell behind early but rallied a little to stay in touch as the final ends approached. Then with one rink finished and just 3 ends left to play someone noted that the temperature had risen to 37 degrees, bringing the BV heat policy into effect. Now, during sectional play the worst case scenario can have teams waiting around for a couple of hours if the temperature looks likely to fall back below 36 degrees and they don’t wish to declare a draw. However, in finals play a draw is not permitted and teams may wait until darkness if they are reluctant to reconvene the following day. In this instance play finally resumed at 7:20pm, just half an hour before sunset.
At this point APBC 2 needed to make up 8 shots to draw and force a one end playoff by all three rinks. Rink 1 had two ends remaining and Albert Park managed to score +3 on the first. On rink 3 Armadale snatched +1 from a -4 position with a fine draw shot. This left Albert Park needing to score +6 on the final end and remarkably they were actually holding +6 with just one (opposition) bowl to come. It was a pressure shot in fading light, which had to finish within 1m of the jack to avoid a draw and deciding ends. Much to Armadale’s joy the shot was made and Albert Park scored just +1 on the final end. It was a disappointing result but a fittingly tense finale after about 10 hours spent at the club!
