Scotland's Paul Foster MBE teamed up with countryman Jason Banks from the North of Scotland to form a partnership for the Imagine Cruising UKWorld Indoor Pairs Championship Potters Bowls after his regular partner Alex Marshall MBE dropped out of the elite top 16 ranked players on the World Bowls Tour, and that new double act got on like a house of fire in their opening match against the strong Australian qualifying pair of Chris Carruthers and Justin Wright.
Both from Western Australian, Chris, a 59 year old farmer from Shoalwater who plays bowls at the Safety Bay Club and Justin, a 53 year old Insurance Agent who hails from Lake Grace and is a member of the Willeton Club certainly made their mark on the opening ends of both sets.
In both sets they led 4-0 after two ends but the Scots stormed back over the course of both of them.
The first set was tied at 8-8 on the penultimate end but the Aussies fell foul with short bowls and missed out 9-8.
In the third end of the second set, a wonder, inch perfect bowl from Foster, who has won this World Pairs title on five previous occasions, gave the Scots a full house of four shots and on taking possession of the jack - Banks then made a tactical move, pulling the mat up the green, shortening the jack length drastically.
The Scots adapted to that length and rolled in two further counts of four shots and then added back to back doubles to put the result beyond doubt at 16-4.
"We just couldn't catch that short length of jack" admitted Carruthers later, adding "until that point we'd been doing quite well".
RESULT - Day 3 / Match 3
Jason Banks & Paul Foster MBE (Scot) bt Chris Carruthers & Justin Wright (Aus) 9-8, 16-4;
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