ERNIE Backhouse fought back from behind to beat Acomb's Ken Patterson in York Veterans' Bowls League Lord Mayor's Two-wood Singles Competition final.

Backhouse, of Shipton, had previously won the event in 1995, while Patterson had won the competition for the last two years.

Patterson was the stronger player in the early stages and had held the lead at 10-5, 12-6 and 16-12.

Backhouse then staged a remarkable recovery and scored ten shots without reply in the last seven ends to win the title 22-16.

In the semi-finals, Backhouse had beaten Dennis Brown (West Park) 15-13 and Patterson had seen off the challenge of John Berridge (Bert Keech) 15-10 to ensure he had a shot at a hat-trick of titles.

The Lord Mayor of York, Coun Shan Braund, presented the trophies and prizes to the winner, runner-up and losing semi-finalists.

In the finals of the league's cup competitions, held the following day at West Park, Nestle 'B' beat Shipton 'A' 21-10 in the premier competition, the Maddison Cup, and West Park 'A' beat Dunnington 'C' 22-16 in the Coronation Cup.

Putting pressure on from the off worked wonders for Nestle 'B', who took a 7-0 lead over Shipton 'A', who were never able to recover from their bad start.

The winning rink was Arthur Dent, Brian Arundale, John Allan and Fred Clayden.

The Coronation Cup proved a tighter affair.

West Park 'A' led Dunnington 'C' 13-3 after eight ends of the final and were still in control at 21-10 after 15 ends.

Dunnington then scored five shots to reduce the deficit to six shots with just two ends to play.

The teams exchanged singles over the last two ends and West Park won 22-16.

The winning rink was John Mordue, Terry Mathews, Selwyn Paylor and George Ward.

Fred Hemenway presented the trophies to the winners and runners-up in both competitions.