Radford, president of the Rich River club, won the 2020 five-a-side tournament and will have the same personnel on board to defend the title on Wednesday and Thursday, February 16-17.
The popular tournament was not staged in 2021, but its 2020 instalment was won when Radford and his charges lost just one game of the 12 on the two-day program.
Radford’s close friend — and former Victorian singles champion — John Lynch will be returning from Goolwa in South Australia to defend the title alongside Mr Radford. The team will also include Derek Ballinger, Trevor Nagorcka and Eugene Xodo.
The tournament will involve 20 teams of five bowlers, mostly from the Campaspe region, but also attracting teams from Cohuna, Swan Hill and other neighbouring regions.
“We send the brochure out to clubs in our association, but there are some long-standing teams who come from Melbourne to be involved,” Mr Radford said.
Because of the format of the tournament, the Rich River club is restricted in the amount of entries it can accept.
“For every match there are two games going, so we are taking up a lot of greens,” Mr Radford said.
Day one involves a triples and a pairs event in the morning and then the afternoon session is a singles and fours contest, followed by another triples and pairs event.
Day two involves a reversal of the playing order, with fours and singles in the morning, then triples and pairs, and the final round is another game of fours and singles.
In all there are six rounds and a maximum of 12 points can be collected for the round-robin tournament.
Mr Radford and his team earned 11 of a possible 12 points to claim the 2020 event.
Another unique part of the tournament is that no bowler can remain in the same position for more than one game of the tournament.
This means that three members of each five-member team will compete in singles, and more than likely most players will at some point take up the skipper’s post.
“It’s a very popular tournament, and well worth winning,” Mr Radford said
“It was $4800 in 2020 and we have rounded it up this year.
“It really is two great days of bowling.’’
Mr Radford said he believed the Rich River tournament was one of the most popular tournaments around the area.
“I’d never played in this type of format before I came here.
“It is still not played a lot, although there are a few more starting to pop up now. They are all one-day events though,” he said.
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