THE Bulls have taken out the Portland Eightball Association division one grand final after a tough contest against Royal One on Sunday at the Heywood Angling Club.

It was a close match with The Bulls claiming the victory after 14 games were played out, 8-6.

The teams played two rounds of singles, six games in each round, with the results sitting at six games each before playing out two doubles games where The Bulls closed out the match.

Captain of The Bulls, Conrad Prentice, said it was a hard-fought win with his side holding out when it mattered.

“We’ve had some really good games against Royal all season and we have challenged each other with some really close games,” he said.

“By the end of the first rounds we were six all and it was pushed to 14 games, so it was definitely a close one.”

The Bulls got off to a solid start with Sam Atchison defeating Brian Jenkins, and Joel Hollis winning his match against Peter Ryan.

Clint Foster managed to win a game back for Royal One against Scott Martin before The Bulls secured another win through Jake Hasegawa in his game against Craig Atchison.

Dave Debono kept Royal One in the match with a victory against Prentice.

Jake Davies secured the last game of the round for The Bulls against Kevin Farley, making it a 4-2 margin after the first six games.

Royal One responded in the second round winning the first three games through Jenkins, Atchison and Foster before dropping two but keeping themselves in the contest with a last game win by Farley, to level the scores 6-6.

The doubles matches were the sticking point for The Bulls with Atchison and Hasegawa defeating Foster and Jenkins before Hollis and Davies closed out the premiership for The Bulls against Craig Atchison and Ryan.

It has been a solid season for the association with a format change two years ago resulting in two divisions.

This has provided the opportunity for plenty of teams to take part and shows plenty of promise for the growth of the competition.

“It’s been really promising for us; we changed the format a few years ago because the league had gotten pretty big and teams were only playing each other once before finals,” Prentice said.

“So, we split the teams into division one and division two and that has worked pretty well so far.

“If teams are winning more they can get bumped up, it just helps us keep growing.”

Division two

The division two grand final saw Heywood Hotel use their experience to get on top of newcomers to the league, Heywood Bowling Club.

It was an 8-1 victory for Heywood Hotel who dominated on the table throughout the day.

Heywood Bowling Club won the first game of the day with Darryl Moore defeating Lindsay Saunders before a string of impressive performances from Dave Gorrie, Tony Scott, Rex Phillips, Kobey Sciascia and Jayden Lillyst put Heywood Hotel on top.

Despite the big margin, Prentice said it was still a huge success for the newly included club.

“Heywood Bowling Club are a new team this year, so for them to make the grand final in their first year was pretty impressive,” he said.

“I think in the end it came down to Heywood Hotel having a lot of experience and Heywood Bowling Club probably had a few jitters and nerves.”

• The Portland Eightball Association is expecting to hold their Annual General Meeting in January, with more details to be posted on their Facebook page.