BOTH Wirral's representative teams had their first matches on Sunday, and unfortunately things did not go that well for either team.

Birkenhead and District Park's came up against last year's champions, Yorkshire, and though they did well in the home leg at Royden, winning seven of the 12 games, they unfortunately could only manage two winners in the away leg and lost overall by a score of Yorkshire 21 - Birkenhead 11.

At home, the outstanding performances were two single figure wins by Chris Motley, 21 – 05 and Nick Burridge, 21 – 08.

While away Andy Hayes had a great 21 - 05 win, with Nigel Hughes being the only other winner.

The Wallasey Association, now playing in the Bowls Federation League, were drawn against the Welsh team Mon Menai. Both the home and away matches were close but the team from Wales took the overall win.

In the home leg on Hoylake Central's green both teams had six winners with Geoff Lynch's 21-09 the best result for the home team and Wallasey just won by seven points.

But in the away match in Caernarfon Wallasey had five winners and the team lost by 28 points.

The best away result was a fine Captain's performance by Chris Barton who had a commanding 21-05 win.

Both teams will be hoping to do better in their next games.

The final stages of the Wirral Association's Charity Handicap Tournament was played on the green at Royden Hall and the winner of this year's tournament was Tixall's Brian Somerville who beat Gladstone's Jamie Smith in the final. Somerville played exceptionally well throughout the tournament and continued his good form at Royden.

In the quarter-final he just scraped through against Gladstone's Nick Burridge, a player who has previously won this tournament several times, and he then beat another Gladstone player, Darren Hankin, in the semis.

Smith did very well to beat Tixall's Nigel Hughes in the quarter final and he then proved to be too good for Port Sunlight's Peter McBride in the semi-final. However in the final Somerville was in imperious form and he swept to a 21-07 victory.

Results: Quarter-finals: DHankin (Gladstone) 21, J Box (New Brighton Quarry Vikings) 17; B Somerville (Tixall) 21, N Burridge (Gladstone) 20; P McBride (Port Sunlight V and W) 21, D McDermott Heswall RBL) 17; J Smith (Gladstone) 21, N Hughes (Tixall) 11. Semi-finals: Somerville 21, Hankin 15; Smith 21, McBride 13. Final: Somerville 21, Smith 07.