On Friday, January 22 24 members of Helensburgh Curling Club travelled to Greenacres Ice Rink to compete in the annual President's trophy.

This event is a mixture of competition and club social so after coming off the ice the members sit down to a meal and await the results and prizegiving at the end of the evening.

Every competitor plays in four two end games in each of the positions within a team but with a different group of players each time.

Each player keeps their own personal scorecard recording the plus and minus score from each game to arrive at a final total which may be anywhere from plus 20 to minus 20.

The overall check is carried out by totalling all competitors scorecards which should arrive at zero.

Normally one individual pulls ahead and wins outright but this year was an extremely close event. Both Derek Spall and Ewen Baird (yet again) were tied on plus 7 while George Kerr was a very close third at plus 6.

The normal rules of curling were then followed by looking at overall ends won and once again there was a tie.

This produced the result that Ewen had a plus 10 in one of his games while Derek had only a plus 9 and thus Ewen was declared the winner and was duly presented with the trophy and a bottle of whisky by the Club President Crawford Howat.

By way of a consolation Derek received a bottle of whisky but lost out on the kudos of being the overall winner.