By Mikayla van Loon
The Lilydale Bowls Club has been holding its own in the premier division despite currently sitting ninth out of ten.
Co-coach and player Josh Sanders said in 90 per cent of the team’s matches, they have been in front up until the halfway mark but can’t seem to hold on to the lead.
“It’s been a fairly hard time. Playing at the most prestigious level, it can be quite challenging,” he said.
“We’re playing against quite a few international bowlers, national bowlers and state level bowlers.”
Although just a few rounds to go in the season, Lilydale still has to play Mentone and Croydon who are sitting eighth and tenth respectively.
These three teams will battle it out in the coming weeks for eighth position to avoid relegation to division one.
“How we’ve gone against each team, I definitely would say we’re a better side than where we’re situated,” Sanders said.
“You look at how many rink wins we’ve had and compared to both Mentone and Croydon, we’ve almost doubled the amount of rink wins that we’ve all had.”
With a few player injuries and personal events happening in some team members’ lives, Sanders said it has made things difficult but the team still prides itself on playing as one.
“We pride ourselves on teamwork, team camaraderie. If you talk to anyone at our club, they love playing with their mates, they love playing for their mates.
“So I think if we can go into any one of the next few games with that attitude and in any sport, you need a little bit of luck as well as skill.”
With such a focus on camaraderie, Sanders said it’s about the entire club’s success not just the premier team.
“Our other three Saturday pennant sides, two of them are sitting on top, one of them is undefeated and the other team’s sitting fourth guaranteed finals. So as a club, we’re going very well.
“It’s not just about our premier side, it’s about our whole club, and to sit back and see that we’ve got so many other sides ready to play finals in three weeks time is fantastic.”
Sanders said the premier team wants to set an example coming into the last weeks of the season, to hopefully see each of the teams in other divisions move up and potentially win a division flag.
“The main thing is when we lose we just need to get as many points as we can [from rink wins].
“The biggest test for us is this weekend, we play against a very strong team in Altona and then we play against a team that we’re fighting for the same position of staying up.
“So if we can get out of this weekend with a couple of wins, or at least winning good points, it’ll set us up for the remainder of the season.”
In the final four rounds, Lilydale will play Mentone, Deer Park, Bundoora RSL and Croydon.
