Under the stewardship of club captain Keith Alexander, the Seale and Sands Bowling Club enjoyed unprecedented success in 2021.

Most significantly, the club secured the Farnham and District First Division title - the top division - by the massive margin of 13.5 points.

This league is a mixed team event and covers many bowls clubs in the wider region, including Farnborough and Fleet and beyond.

Having four quality skips in John Green, Danny Wilkinson, David Toop and Keith Alexander certainly made a difference.

It also helped that the three ladies who featured prominently throughout the season - Charmian Lester, Lesley Alexander and Kate Rose - were some of the best in the league.

The club’s attention then focused on the Farnham and District knockout competitions and during the season the club fought their way through to an impressive three competition finals.

Finals Day was held this year at Tongham Bowling Club and Seale and Sands were also represented by John Green in the men’s singles final.

The first final, the Goolding Cup, taking place in the morning, was played by two rinks of four players against a good Rowledge team.

Each won one rink but Seale and Sands secured victory with an impressive 54-29 shots difference.

The Boyd Trophy, which followed after lunch, was also against Rowledge. This competition is played as singles, pairs, triples and rinks with two points awarded for each discipline won.

Again shots difference proved decisive - the match finished with four points each - with Seale and Sands winning both the singles and the pairs, triumphing overall by 76 shots to 65.

In their final team event of the day, late in the afternoon, the club played Farnborough in the Ken Britton Trophy - and incredibly some of the players were taking part in their third match of the day.

This match format is played by two teams of two triples and honours were even on matches won - but this time shots went against Seale and Sands, losing a very tight match 25 shots to 30.

But, altogether, it was a hugely-successful day for the Seale and Sands Bowling Club’s teams - and the orchestrator, Keith Alexander, in notching up three pieces of silverware, must have sprinkled some magic dust on his teams this season.

In the final of the Farnham and District men’s singles competition, John Green played Carl Taylor from Cove.

This was a predictably hard-fought match which saw leads for both players come and go.

In the end John Green secured the title 21-17. An experienced and accomplished bowler, this was his first success in this particular competition since 1992.

On the domestic club front, the men’s singles title was deservedly won by Danny Wilkinson.

The ladies’ singles title was won by Rosemarie Gilburt and she even enjoyed a ’Super Saturday’ of her own because she followed up that victory by winning the four-wood handicap competition.

She needed to draw precisely to the jack on the final shot of the match in a close encounter against Dave Everitt - and she did just that.

A season at the Seale and Sands Bowling Club wouldn’t be the same without premier bowler Danny Wilkinson picking up a few trophies and he duly obliged by also winning the 100 Up and the two-wood competitions.

The concluding event, the Doward Shield for pairs, was well won by Emlyn Hughes and Rob Taylor.

Both the men’s and women’s teams narrowly missed out on promotion but the men’s team, captained by David Toop, and the women’s team, captained by Kary Taylor, both have very capable players and the club can look forward with positive momentum to next season.

Club chairman Tim Small said: "After the impact of lockdowns, it was just nice to have everyone back together again - we’re a friendly club.

"It has been an outstanding playing season for the club and I would like to think we can pick up in 2022 where we left off this season.

"I’d like to thank everyone concerned for their contribution to our success, especially the club committee for enabling it all to fit into place."

David Gill