By Ewen McRae
Deer Park suffered its first loss of the premier bowls season, going down to Yarraville Footscray on Saturday.
Despite coming into the game on the back of three powerful wins, Deer Park could only manage to draw one rink while registering big losses in the remaining three as it went down 98 (17) – 59 (1).
Deer Park president Neil Cromie said it was a disappointing day.
“You’ve got to give Yarraville Footscray credit, across the board they were a lot better than us,” Cromie said.
“They were more consistent, and kept the pressure on us all day. Unfortunately each time we tried to get back into the game they kept it steady and kept going down the path of what they were doing.
“There’s no excuses from our side, sometimes you just get outplayed and that’s what’s happened.”
While the early stages of the match were tight, the home side had soon established a lead across all four rinks, and it was an advantage it drove home as the match progressed.
Skip Chris Ball was able to stage a comeback to split his rink 24-apiece, but that was as good as it got for the Parkers as the hosts enjoyed a commanding victory.
While it was a bad day for the visitors, Cromie said his side was still well-placed a month into the season.
“If you’d told us we’d be 3-1 after four games you’d take that quite happily,” he said. “Our next game is at home, which gives us another chance to establish a domination that we’re trying to achieve on our home surface … hopefully we can put this weekend down to just a blip.
“It goes back to a bit of a football analogy of home ground advantage, that’s what we’re aiming for … it builds up a sense of expectation in sides coming here that we’re hard to beat here.”
