Emmarentia’s All-Blacks
EMMARENTIA- Protea Sports Bowling Club ups the ante at JBA Saturday League.
Protea Sports Club Bowling performed superbly on 9 November in a Johannesburg Bowls Association Saturday league division four game against Rivonia.
Three quartets from each club squared off but the Emmarentia-based club eventually pulled out on top with a score of 12- 6. Protea Sports is now eleventh out of twelve teams in the division.
One of Protea’s winning teams says that they now have the will to win matches.
“We’ve got the confidence that any game we go into, we can win it,” said Thomas Tshikos who has been rolling bowls since the nineties. “I remember when I started playing, the very first I won the club championships.”
Tshikos was an expert greenskeeper and though apartheid laws kept him from playing the sport, he watched keenly for many years.
“Playing in the league now, we just want to get better and better and get to the first division,” he said.
“We are the only club with four black players in one team,” joked Lucas Mpodu, “we call ourselves the ‘All Blacks.’”
Every year, the clubs falling within the JBA district take part in the Saturday League, one of the country's hardest fought inter-club tournaments boasting eight divisions and a pennant in the men's section and six divisions in the women's.
