Colin Kelly became the first Manxman to win the most prestigious award in UK crown green bowling at Blackpool on Saturday.

The Marown favourite put the icing on the cake of a great season when securing the Champion of Champions event at the Waterloo Hotel green to write his name into the annals of local and UK bowls history.

On the domestic scene this year Kelly has won five singles titles - namely the Manx Championship, Association Cup, Manx Masters, Peel Town Cup and the season-opening Marown Floodlit competition.

In addition the 51-year-old was also the Division One individual merit winner.

Kelly was representing the Isle of Man in Blackpool, having qualified for the Champion of Champions courtesy of his Manx Championship win in May when he defeated Onchan man Jordan Cain 21-11 in the final.

He was in the mix with 15 other county merit winners, while the rest of the field was made up by the victors of some of the game’s biggest competitions throughout the season or those who had been successful in the junior or senior BCGBA merit contests.

At the start of play in a field of 32 players Kelly was priced at 40-1 by the bookies and was by no means the favourite. The leading names taking part included Callum Wraight, Graeme Wilson, Ryan Prosser and John Bailey, to name but a few.

In round one he was drawn against Lancashire merit winner Damian Morrison and managed to build up a comfortable lead early on, playing a fairly long, straight peg around the crown. Kelly led 13-3 and managed to maintain his advantage after Morrison started to work his way back into the game before Kelly finished it off to win 21-13.

He then faced the Greater Manchester merit winner Jack Hargreaves, who had disposed of Craig Gant, a player well known in the island. Kelly went for a longer length mark in this game, with Hargreaves preferring to play the edges and short round pegs and playing them really well.

Kelly led well on the longer marks in difficult conditions to take a hard-earned 21-17 victory.

In the quarter-finals the popular Manxman was up against South Yorkshire merit winner James Higgins and was initially trailing 6-13.

The latter was leading well over 35 yards, playing sweeping round pegs across the crown. Once again this forced Kelly to go for a longer length, giving his opponent little room to leave him generally short or pushing too far through as it began raining quite heavily.

Higgins had previously put out 2018 winner John Bailey quite convincingly, so Kelly did extremely well to claim a 21-19 victory.

By reaching the semi-finals he had now matched the best performance by a Manxman achieved by John Kennish in 2015. This time he was up against the Shropshire merit winner Spencer Clarke, who in truth was the best player on the green up until this point having taken three good scalps to reach the semi-finals. These included a 21-6 win over 2019 BCGBA senior merit winner Ryan Prosser.

With conditions worsening, the green started to puddle and ’cobbing’ was required to be able to reach, which is an art in itself in controlling bowls. Kelly took full advantage of the conditions to take a 21-11 win with the result more comfortable than expected.

Having made the final, Kelly was not letting a once in a lifetime opportunity pass him by and was simply brilliant.

He was up against Scott Simpson , the Wrockwardine Wood winner, who had earlier in the day disposed of one of the game’s greatest ever players in Graeme Wilson.

Kelly knew what he was up against and recognised that Simpson had no trouble reaching the longer marks, so the game plan changed to shorter marks over the crown which he executed brilliantly to grab an 8-3 lead, building on this further to lead 16-7.

After conceding his only double of the game, he responded with two quick-fire doubles of his own to lead 20-9.

Simpson then scored a single, only to throw the jack off when heading into the corner. Kelly set the mark and made his first bowl count, forcing his opponent to reach with his second bowl. But he missed with this, resulting in Kelly taking a superb 21-10 victory to claim a first ever win for a Manxman in the game’s biggest competition.

Colin’s ability to make two had a big influence on the ultimate outcome, having scored no fewer than seven doubles throughout the game.

This is a popular win amongst the bowling community with the Ballasalla man putting the time in for a number of years now to give something back to the game having become involved in the Manx Youth Games as a coach in 2013. He also coaches juniors on a weekly basis at his club.

In addition to this, Colin also helps with the maintenance of the Marown green and you couldn’t meet a nicer guy, who has now fulfilled a lifelong dream of winning a top UK competition.

All that is left to say is what a bowler, what a season, what a man!