Tight race at the top

The Geelong Bowls Region Pennant competition has three clear-cut premiership fancies after round five on Saturday.

Ocean Grove 1, Eastern Park and Highton sit have emerged from the pack with fourth placed Queenscliff 12 points adrift.

Ocean Grove and Eastern Park are level on 66 points and Highton is two points behind.

Ocean Grove defeated Queenscliff by 14 shots with Peter Loe, Andrew Gower, Callum Hanna and Tyson Cromie blitzing their rink with a 25 to 11 triumph.

Highton didn’t have things all its own way against the winless Lara, but still did enough to take all 16 points on offer.

Highton won all three rinks against a dogged Lara side with Jeremy Fitzgerald leading his to a seven-shot victory.

Eastern Park had to work hard to overcome Bell Post Hill.

In the end it was a 10-shot win with Glenn Slattery’s rink enjoying a huge 19-shot win, but Ben Toner salvaged two points for Bell Post Hill with an impressive 29 to 16 effort.

Drysdale defeated City of Geelong by 10 to snare fifth spot on the ladder.

John Fry, Maya Rees, Adrian Marston and John Coe set things up thanks to a 21 to 14 win.

Bareena defeated Ocean Grove 2 in a three-shot cliffhanger.

Both sides sit on two wins each. The Grovers won two of the three rinks played, but it was Ben Wilding’s rink that saved the day with a 20-shot victory.

This weekend’s match of the round is undoubtedly between Ocean Grove 1 and Eastern Park.

The winner will assume outright top spot on the ladder and early season premiership favouritism.