Part 2 of a look back over 90 years of Morayshire Indoor Bowling Association
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THE Morayshire Indoor Bowling Association season may not be contested this year, but 90 years of the league are being celebrated.
Long-serving member Ronald Gordon’s step back in time through nine decades of the association looked last time at the founding years, and now he turns his focus to the wartime period.
Of course, 2020 has seen all sporting activity interrupted by coronavirus, but in the 1940s it was the outbreak of the World War II which brought everything to a halt.
Between 1939 and 1946, indoor bowling like all other sports was placed on the shelf, but on the resumption of the Morayshire league it was an established name that triumphed.
Founder members New Elgin, who along with Hopeman and Elgin Town Hall created the first season of competitions in 1930, swept to their fifth championship glory in 1947.
A newer name was to take the honours the following year, with Kilmolymock –who joined the league in 1934 – claiming their maiden title triumph.
It proved to be a brief interlude as New Elgin continued their dominance, regaining the championship in 1949 to end the decade as the dominant club in Morayshire.
In the Campbell Cup competition, two different winners emerged from the more rural parts of Moray.
Urquhart and Miltonduff had won the first two titles in the 1930s, but post-war, Burghead’s W Joss lifted the trophy in 1948 and a year later it was the turn of Dallas bowler J Stark to taste victory in the final.
It was the start of a success story in the pairs competition when Fraser Bain took the trophy home to Bishopmill. Partnered with J McNeil, he claimed the first of what turned out to be five pairs titles in 1947.
Urquhart proved to be a dominant force in the same competition at the end of the decade.
Two different pairings lifted the silverware for the village team, with W Donaldson and A McKenzie teaming up for victory in 1948, and club colleagues W S Dean and J. MacKay doing the honours the following season.
The association at this time was really starting to gain momentum as it headed into the booming fifties.
