THERE was a time when the BSF Ladies' Rounders League had a two week break for Bolton Holidays, but then the schools changed their terms, people were saying "Bolton Holidays don't exist any more" and the League opted to play straight through the season.

The old pattern never suited everybody because Horwich, Westhoughton and Chorley had different holidays, but the majority of teams were happy with the mid-season break.

When it changed, the philosophy was that teams would just have to register enough players to cover for holidays. An excellent theory, but in practice several teams have suffered.

Last week, one Section 'A' team conceded a match because they were struggling for players, and the matches which were played did not necessarily go to plan.

Originally scheduled to referee just one match during the week, I ended up with three as the Referees' Secretary struggled to cover the matches, and all three ended with one team winning by an innings, and certainly in the case of Thursday's game between Astra Ladies and Prices XI 'B', holidays played a part.

Astra Ladies fielded a full team including a few young and inexperienced players. Whilst it is good for the future that the youngsters were given the chance of a full game, Astra found themselves without three regular bowlers - and some teams don't even have that many. One team actually found themselves without their bowler, backstop and first base.

Batting first, Astra immediately lost two of their first three batters at first base, but stuck to their task and batted for half an hour. Jane Bromilow scored the only rounder of the innings and finished with 12 runs after failing to score on the second and third rounds. L.Benson was top scorer with 15 and A.Higginson hit double figures with ten to give Astra a creditable first innings 71.

When Prices 'B' went to bat, Astra's bowling deficiency became evident as Prices batted for 15 minutes and scored over 50 runs before losing a batter on a very tight first base decision.

R Myers started slowly for Prices, scoring five ones, two twos and a zero before hitting her first rounder. This was followed by a zero, two rounders, another zero, two more rounders and a three before being denned for 42 runs. As part of the last pair, J Newton finished with a rounder and 24 runs before being caught out.

Christine Makin scored a steady 21 runs whilst T Myers (18) and K.Matthews ((16) both included rounders in their totals. Unfortunately for Astra, the top score was the bad balls, 43 of them in all, due to a combination of inexperienced bowlers and a difficult wind which tended to make the ball drift wide.

As Astra went to bat again, their ever-cheerful secretary Mari Bromilow comments "at least we won't be fielding again in this match", but captain Jane Bromilow said "If you write about this match, I'll never speak to you again!" Oh well - anything for a quite life.

Despite facing an almost impossible task, the Astra players batted with determination and played as though they were going to win the game. Jane Bromilow hit a rounder before being hit out for eight, C.Mosley also recorded a rounder before being hit out for nine and Lorraine Kemp was denned for ten on the seventh round.

Their efforts gave Astra 70 for the innings and 141 for the match, well short of Prices winning total, but a score which, on another night could win a game for such determined players.