CONFIRMATION that the outdoor bowls season is warming up comes with the news that the Hampshire County teams are well under way with their preparations for the forthcoming county games.

In the case of the men, this is in the Middleton Cup, while the women contest the Johns Trophy. The Hampshire County Bowling Association held a first trial for the Middleton Cup team by fielding a team in a friendly against Surrey at Southampton Sports Centre.

A second trial will be held on May 30 at the same venue when a completely different team of trialists will entertain Dorset.

Surrey fielded their full Middleton Cup side against Hampshire's trialists, so the latter did extremely well to restrict the visitors to a one-shot win-ning margin. Both counties won on three rinks and one of Hampshire's losses came on the final end.

This rink was skipped by Peter Line and they were tied 13-13 going into the last end against Wynne Richards, but then dropped three shots.

Further bad luck for Hampshire came when Graham Standley had to retire hurt from skipping his rink when they were leading 9-3, after which they stumbled to a 21-14 defeat. The other Hampshire rink to lose was Iain Foster's, thumped 27-13 by Paul Vamvacopoulos.

Hampshire's best victory was achieved by Julian Haines with a 27-14 success, while Peter Pull won 24-18 on his return to the Hampshire team following a three-year absence and Colin Hayward gained an excellent 21-17 win over Barry Jenkins. Little surprise, therefore, that Hampshire manager Peter Kemp said afterwards: "Overall I was extremely pleased because the likes of Nicky Jones, Russell Morgan and Peter Ward were not in this selection, whereas Surrey were at full strength. Morgan and Ward will be playing against Dorset but Jones will be away at the England trials in Leicestershire."

Jones is playing number three to Andy Thompson in this full England trial and he will be joined at the New Lount Bowling Club by his Hampshire colleague Dean Morgan, who is having an England trial as a lead.

Hampshire's Middleton Cup programme starts with a home match against Isle of Wight on Saturday, June 5 and the team will be selected following the trial game against Dorset. The Under-25 team to play at Chesham on June 13 and the Top Four rink to play at Oxford City & County on June 6 will be selected at the same time.

Rink scores v Surrey: Mark Hanson, Trevor Bailey, Peter Hobday, Iain Foster lost to Paul Vamvacopoulos 13-27 Keith Brown, Paul Lawrence, Colin Thresher, Peter Pull beat Dave Clark 24-18 Steve Robertson, Dorian Bishop, David Biggs, Colin Hayward beat Barry Jenkins 21-17 Chris Daniels, Andy Ross, Roy Alford, Peter Line lost to Wynne Richards 13-16 Dean Morgan, Chris Martin, Jim Marsland, Julian Haines beat Joe Stevens 27-14 Matthew Marchant, Mick Brown, Nicky Smith, Graham Standley (rep Colin Taylor) lost to John Sussex 14-21 Hampshire 112 Surrey 113

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