It’s now officially the half way point in this year’s South Hams Short Mat season and it would appear that each of the three divisions have a battle at the top.

In division one it is the Slapton Cygnets, closely followed by the Milk Churns; in division two it is the Milk­ies with Loddiswell chasing their heels and in division three the Slapton Swans are the premier team, with the Brentonians looking to close the gap.

In this week’s matches division leaders Slapton Cygnets were just too strong for South Milton, with Ar­thur Wotton and Simon Bennett both recording relatively easy wins over Brian and Kenny Luscombe to claim ano­ther maximum six points.

It was a similar story at Dartington, where the Churns breezed past Stokenham Stokers 44-13, with Simon Prid­ham and Dick Boon just far too good on their home mats for John Cadman and Peter Sandell.

For the other two Dartington-based teams it was not quite such an easy run, with Robert Luscombe stealing the glory at home for the South Milton Sanders, with a fine 19-7 victory over Chris Edwards. This was just enough to cover the 8-17 defeat of Ivy Yeabs­ley, for four points.

And it was a similar story again in the Strete v Spilt Milk encounter, where Tony Andrew’s rink took a 10-shot victory over Pauline Han­cock, which again just managed to cover a nine-shot deficit by the rink skipped by Andy Pound.

In division two the Milkies thrashed King­ston 63-10, with both Rose Morrison and Malcolm Hayter’s rinks restricting their opponents to single-figure scores.

Not to be outdone, Loddiswell also thumped Ivybridge by some 30 shots to grab another fine six points.

The move to put young Oliver White together with his father Richard seems to be paying dividends, particularly with Fred Carpenter more than capable of holding his own as the other skip.

Diptford did their current lowly position no harm with a fine 28-21 win over fellow strugglers Dittisham.

In division three the Brentonians made home advantage pay as they defeated Foxhole, securing all six points with a 32-14 win.

John Shepherd and Bob Pike both won comfortably over Alan Mitchell and John Derbyshire.

It was a completely different story at Sto­kenham, where the Hammers entertained Stoke Fleming.

With both teams eager for points, they each had a one-shot victory, leaving the game all square with three points each.

In a late Knock Out Cup fixture Strete comfortably progressed to the semi-final with a solid 34-14 victory over the Milkies; their opponents in that sem-final match will be Ivy­bridge.