THE best in North Ayrshire bowling congregated at Ardrossan BC on Tuesday evening to see who would be representing the district at the Scottish Championships in July.

Five matches took place on the night with rule changes seeing the Under-25 singles played early as both players would feature in other disciplines.

Irvine Park’s Calum Williamson will go to Northfield in the juniors after overcoming Blair Davidson by 21 shors to 15 on Sunday afternoon.

Blair and Calum returned to Ardrossan just two days later, Blair in the singles and Calum in the fours.

In the singles it was a much better result for the Blacklands 17-year-old who made it through to Northfield after a 21-7 win over Ardrossan’s Ewan Sloan. The youngster will be hoping to recapture the form which saw him lift the Under-18’s Scottish title.

In the pairs, it was a one-sided affair with two of the four from West Kilbride, in Darren O’Rourke and David Crawford, who won the Scottish Fours in 2015, defeating Beith’s Willie Smith and Duncan Meldrum by 30 shots to 8.

The triples meant double celebration’s for the Blacklands with the trio of Robbie Gatherer, Ally Davidson and last year’s Scottish Singles quarter-finalist Scott Spiers beating Largs Halkshill’s Wallace Mercer, Derek Lowrie and Scott Stevenston 18-6 in a game much tighter than the scoreline suggests.

The drama on the night came by the way of the fours game where Irvine Park and Dreghorn came head to head and it went right down to the wire. It was 13-13 playing the last end with the former just sneaking over the line with the team of James Boyce, Graham Gunion, Calum Williamson and Martin Williamson winning 15-13 against George Spence, Ian Boyd, John Reid and Frank McCartney.

The final game on the green was the mixed pairs and this time Largs Halkshill managed to get over the line with David Rae and Nora Malcolm overcoming Sean Stirling and Susan Ross by 18 shots to 4.

The winners will now go on to Ayr Northfield at the end of July in the hope of becoming national champions and they were joined earlier in the afternoon by Alex McCartney from Dreghorn who won through in the senior singles after a 21-12 win over Bert Sidebottom from Largs and the senior four of Tommy Hardie, Bobby Gilbert, David Scaife and Andy Williams from Kilwinning won 18-8 against Saltcoats’ John Keddilty, Billy Brown, John Reid and George Miller.