THE scheduled pairing of Mags Thomson and Janet Fairnie experienced a blow ahead of their Scottish senior pairs semi-final.

Skip Fairnie unfortunately tested positive for Covid-19, which ruled her out for the finals weekend taking place at Stirling Indoor Bowling Club.

Ormiston favourite Yvonne Veitch was selected to deputise for the Castlepark bowler.

The rearranged pair are no strangers to playing together and previously secured the Ladies’ Scottish Indoor triples crown with East Lothian Indoor Bowling Club (ELIBC) team-mate Emma Logan back in the 2013-14 season.

The partnership proved fruitful in the morning session semi-final, dispatching West Lothian side Balbardie by a comfortable margin 23-14 and booking their place in the afternoon showpiece.

The pair were joined in the final session by East Lothian youngster Kieran Dodds as he overcame George Robertson 21-16 in his U19 semi-final.

Dougie Berwick was aiming to make it a hat-trick of finals for East Lothian.

Unfortunately, the singles representative came across a man in form, losing out to eventual winner Robert Murphy of Blantyre in the last four.

The finals session was a predictably close affair.

Both Dodds and the ladies’ pairs found shots extremely hard to come by over the first half of their matches.

As the ties entered the last 30 minutes, it was all to play for and titles were within touching distance.

Dodds was agonisingly just four shots from victory but lost 21-17 to West of Scotland’s Aimee Harris.

Attention quickly swung to the pairs as they entered the final ends of play, with the game on the proverbial knife edge.

The dust settled over a tense final end, with the county pair celebrating a 14-13 victory.

Meanwhile, the East Lothian ladies entered their final league game against league leaders East Fife knowing they required a mammoth 90-plus shot victory to claim top spot.

The task was made more difficult with the unavailability of Fairnie.

East Fife came and executed a decisive victory 61-42 over the home side and saw themselves crowned top of the East Premier Division and into the league final play-offs.

Elsewhere, the seniors from East Lothian got their Scottish Cup campaign off and running against Teviotdale in the round one fixture.

It was a high-scoring but one-sided affair at Midlothian last Wednesday.

There were wins across the carpet for the four rinks of Dougie Berwick (+22), Willie Wood (+25), Andy Burt (+9) and Tommy Young (+3) providing a whitewash 10-0 scoreline.

The team take on Midlothian in the next round and welcome back Garden County legend Graham Robertson as they look to book their place in the semi-final of the cup.

The fixture is scheduled for Wednesday at Tweedbank.