The 2014 Spring Triples Tournament organised by the Monmouthshire Short Mat Bowls Association was held at Chepstow Leisure Centre on Saturday 8th March.

This time, 27 teams took part, a welcome increase on the numbers taking part over the past two or three years, including five teams from Caldicot and two from recently joined club Caerwent.

The regular supporters of the event – namely Usk, Devauden, Magor, Mardy, Mathern, Little Mill and Goytre – were also taking part.

The clubs were divided into seven groups for the first round with the group winners and best runner-up moving onto the quarter finals.

There were some closely fought games in the first round with the winners of three of the groups being decided on shots average, as the teams were level on points.

The teams going through to the quarter finals were Caldicot's Roly Carey, A Hope and R Burton, Mathern's Steve Jones, Devauden's P McCarthy and P Williams, Mardy's Lewis Meredith and Usk's R Berry.

Two of the quarter finals saw fairly easy wins for Steve Jones from Mathern against A Hope from Caldicot and Roly Carey from Caldicot against P McCarthy from Devauden.

The other two quarter finals were very close with only two points separating the winning and losing teams. The semi-finalists were Mathern's Steve Jones, Caldicot's Roly Carey, Devauden's P Williams and Mardy's Lewis Meredith.

In the semi-final of Lewis Meredith's Mardy team and Peter Williams' Devauden team, Lewis quickly built up a good lead and although Peter did come back in the last few ends it wasn't sufficient so Lewis went through.

In the other semi, although Steve Jones started quite well Roly pulled back and went out the winners by 9 shots to 5.

In the final between Lewis Meredith and Roly Carey, both teams were evenly matched until the 6th end when Lewis was 3 points in front, Roly then took 5 shots and held the lead despite a comeback by Lewis' team and went out the winners by 8 shots to 7.

A very good match and congratulations to the winning team of Roly Carey, Phil Skinner and Bill Udfa and commiserations to the runners up Lewis Meredith, Elaine Meredith and Jason Powell.

Monmouthshire SMBA were very pleased with the success of the tournament and the support they have received from all the clubs and the sportsmanship of all the competitors.

The next event will be the Autumn Triples which will be held in September/ October 2014.