A CLITHEROE bowling team has reached the final of a national tournament using the ten-pin equivalent of jumpers for goalposts.

Like generations of young footballers forced to use rolled-up clothes as makeshift goals, Clitheroe Round Table's bowling team has had to improvise.

So, despite the Ribble Valley having no ten pin bowling alley, the team could soon taste national success by practising with a football and ten plastic bottles.

The unorthodox training regime, at the bowling green in Clitheroe Castle gardens, has helped the four-man squad prepare for the final after unexpectedly beating Tablers', including Preston, Blackburn, and Lancaster, to win the North West area championship.

Clitheroe will now meet East Midlands on May 10 in the Round Table National Final, at Leeds.

Team coach Martin Gibson, 36, of Downham Road, Chatburn, said: "Beating teams from towns which had their own bowling alleys was a bit of a surprise, so we realised we'd better start practising if we were going to represent the region.

"Getting all our team members to the bowling alley in Blackburn was proving a nightmare and we hadn't any bowling balls, or even skittles, so we just started to use some old plastic bottles and a football instead. That way we could practise any time, using someone's garden, or the bowling green.

"We must be doing something right because we beat a team from Wolverhampton who even brought their own personal bowling balls."

Fellow team members Walter Aspinall, Craig Nicholls, and Stephen Lord are now joining Martin in gearing up for next week's final. Round Tables meet socially to raise money for local good causes.