'Winning the final was emotional for me' - Douglas bowls ace George Prosser exits Lanarkshire South county team in style with national triumph

The Andrew Hamilton Trophy Scottish Championship final victory over Borders at Ayr Northfield on Saturday, July 2 – which followed seven regional wins, a quarter-final success over Lanarkshire West at Lockerbie and a semi-final triumph against Edinburgh at Ayr earlier on finals day – represented a wonderful swansong for George who is now retiring from the squad after over three decades.

The 73-year-old, who informed Lanarkshire South selectors at the start of 2022 that he was going to step aside, told the Carluke and Lanark Gazette: “I told the selectors that I hoped we’d win the Andrew Hamilton tournament because I wanted to go out on a high.

"Then we went and won all these games. Winning the final was emotional for me.

"After all the winners were given their badges, they invited the president of the County team and the captain forward to lift the cup.

"But then the captain – Iain McLean of Blackwood Victoria BC – came to me and said the whole team would like me to lift the cup because I was finishing up.

"It was tremendous. It surpassed my expectations, I was feeling sentimental and it was a great honour for me.”

The 24-man Lanarkshire South group also included fellow Clydesdale players McLean, Law BC pair Steven Baxter and Richard Williams, Colin Thorburn of Thankerton BC and John Meikle of Lesmahagow BC.

And in 2023 they won’t be joined in the squad by Prosser, whose association with Lanarkshire South goes back so far that his second ever game for the club took place at Motherwell’s Dalzell Bowling Club on May 19, 1991, the day the Motherwell football team paraded the Scottish Cup in an open top bus just a few yards away having beaten Dundee United 4-3 after extra time at Hampden 24 hours earlier.

Prosser, of Addison Gardens, is a five-time club champion at Douglas Bowling Club who won this year’s RIJO42 SIBA Scottish Seniors League.