The Famous Grouse Top Ton Classic

This was promoted, organised and presented by the Morrison Centre Indoor Bowls Club in Darlington, and was a huge success.

The 16 teams of ten from all corners of the British Isles provided a quality field including club, county, national, international and world class bowlers who played international selectors, gold medallists, world ranked players and scores of established champions from four nations, provided an unequalled indoor bowls scene for the Blue Chip Sponsors to capture the undivided attention of highly focused players, team managers, experts old and new and media cameras.

The four nations results service, through camera, reports, telephone links, updates, regional, newspapers and BBC Ceefax enthusiasts added greatly to the importance of every end. Ian Jenkins, a 20-year-old international from Cambridge Park (London and Middlesex) was the only player to win all of his six games. He captured the singles gold medal beating David Lockhart (Blackpool) 1811, David Stroughair

(York) 2113 Gordon McKenzie

(Coatbridge Scotland) 21-13, Mark McPeak (Belfast) 1715, Phil Reeve

(Kingsthorpe) 18 13 and Glen Fox

(Brandon) 1917. In his players

championship speech he highly praised the format and structure of the competition and had never been so competitively stretched in his bowling career. The pairs championship was won by David Staples and Paul Simpson of Spalding who lost only one game finishing with 10 points.

East Dorset were hard on their heels who edged out Eldon, Newcastle into third place just ahead of Coatbridge, (Scottish champions) and Kingsthorpe (Notts).

The North Of England flag was in evidence when Eldon crept ahead of County Antrirn (Northern Ireland) to lift the triples crown.

The Newcastle club were well represented by Northern counties champions Eddie Blackburn, Peter Duffy and Steve Harvey who dropped only one point in 12 scoring 75 shots in total against 41.

Folkestone finished in third place just one point ahead of County Antrim. The fours gold medals went to East Dorset represented by Alan Geary, Chris Martin, Terry Chivers and Bill Belcher with County Antrim lifting the silver and Victory (Portsmouth) on the same points over the six games in bronze place. Falcon (Essex) finished in fourth place ahead of Blackpool and Exonia, the Devon champions.

Remarkably, County Antrim after a slow start won the team championship for the second year running collecting 33 points with 325 shots for, against 236 shots, giving them a 58 shots gold medal winning team margin over the Twickenham-based club Cambridge Park.

Mr Des Duffy, for the sponsor Famous Grouse, the Finest Scotch Whisky, presented the prizes. He congratulated the Darlington Indoor Bowls Club for their organisation, presentation skills and their greatest attention to detail