It’s been well publicised the problems I’ve had but now I feel great

“It’s been well publicised the problems I’ve had, but now I feel great.”The problems centred around the break-up of his marriage and a self-confessed descent into heavy drinking, not helped by taking over a pub at the precise time when he was most vulnerable.”I think a lot of it was down to my divorce, which was totally my own doing. His friends and admirers were worried sick about him last year as he went into a downward spiral that mirrored his team’s troubles on the field.”I was totally down and I didn’t give 100 per cent commitment to the job, but this year I’m completely focused,” he said. The club’s coach, the longest-serving in Super League, despite the precariousness of his role, had a hunted, unhappy look about him during last year’s rugby league season “I couldn’t wait for that season to end,” he says. “Now I can’t wait for this one to start.”
The metamorphosis of Gregory has come just in time. “I have a feeling for David Gourlay,” she said, with a smile.Results, Digest, page 29. AMID ALL the changes that have taken place at Salford as they prepare for what they believe will be a vastly better year than last, the most significant is that the glint is back in Andy Gregory’s eye.

While half the numbered seeds have made an early exit, he managed to win his opening match against the Australian player, Steve Glasson.Meanwhile, Sylvia, who has had an unrivalled opportunity to study the form at first hand, has sorted out her own unofficial rankings for the competition, which ends this Sunday. At this standard, you just can’t get away with it.”Gillett’s restrained preparations – single pints and plenty of practice on the same portable rink that was used in last year’s Championships at Preston – appear to be paying off for him. If you get drunk as a skunk when you are due to play the next day, you won’t play very well. Gillett, who broke through to the top level after winning the 1997 Bupa Open title as a qualifier, believes it is up to individual bowlers to discipline themselves.”It’s very easy to be led here,” Gillett said “You’ve got a lot of people wanting to buy you a drink But they serve soft drinks here as well as hard ones. But if they are anything like Gillett, youngest of the seeds at 28, these players have such wise old heads on their shoulders that it is easy to see why the genial Duff stands out as an enfant terrible.

While the spectators at this year’s championship – averaging 400 per session, which is up on Preston’s figures – uphold that perception, Dunwoodie points out that most of the top players are now in their 20s and 30s.This is true. By all accounts, that is not very near at all – Alex Higgins he most certainly is not.The sport’s biggest problem, says the World Bowls Tour’s chief executive Gordon Dunwoodie, is that it is seen as being a sport for old people. Some reports referred to the 35-year-old Scot as the nearest thing bowls has to a wild man. Everybody has been mixing in together – the players, the officials and bods like me. There’s always someone to talk to.” For some of the players, however, constant contact with the paying public can sometimes have its downside.”The facilities are excellent,” Les Gillett, one of the 16 seeded players this year, said “The only minus is you can’t get privacy.

If you have just lost, you want to get away to consolidate your thoughts. Here people keep coming up and saying `hard luck’ or asking for autographs They mean well, but it has bothered a few of the players. You can’t really go anywhere.”Should any of the tormented competitors make a dash for freedom across the surrounding windswept fields, you fancy they would be bounced back inside by one of the huge balloons that used to thwart the escape bids of Patrick McGoohan in the TV series “The Prisoner”.The holiday atmosphere may also have contributed to the discomfiture of the No 2 seed, Hugh Duff, whose unexpected defeat in his first match followed an evening of jollity in the bar which had concluded in the early hours. As she prepared to watch her favourite bowler, Ian Schuback, in action – “I first saw him at the 1986 Commonwealth Games and I thought: `Oh, isn’t he gorgeous’!” – Sylvia reflected upon how it felt to be The Complete Package, to use the new alias bestowed upon her by Radio Norfolk.”I’m having a marvellous time,” she said “I have seen something of every match I’m here alone, but I haven’t been alone.