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Shepparton Park’s Col Power is the champion of champions.

Power defeated East Shepparton’s Paul Nichols 25-14 in the final of the Goulburn Valley Bowls Division tournament at Shepparton Golf yesterday.

Nichols had the upper hand early in the race to 25 shots when he picked up three shots on the sixth end to take a 9-4 lead, but Power picked up shots on the next 12 ends straight to lead 22-9 after 18 ends.

Both division one skippers had overcome tough opponents to make it to the final.

Power defeated Mooroopna skipper Mark Ryan 25-24 in round two the previous week, the first match either had played in the tournament, before eliminating Euroa’s Ken Sutcliffe with a 25-23 win.

He met Stanhope’s Barry Williams in yesterday’s semi-final and won 26-14.

Nichols defeated Dookie’s Scott Greig and Violet Town’s Tony Kingma last week to book a date in the semi-final against in-form Shepparton Golf skipper Rick Orchard.

Yesterday he defeated Orchard 25-19.

Power had won the club championship three times at Shepparton Park, but this was the first time he has won the champion of champions in the Goulburn Valley Bowls Division.

He won the same title in the Central Victoria division while he was playing with Kilmore Bowls Club and made it through to the final eight in Victoria in the next stage of the competition.

‘‘It’s the first time I’ve done it up here, so I’m very happy about that,’’ Power said.

He joked that he had expected to make an early exit last week when he drew Ryan in the first match.

‘‘I got down here last Sunday and thought ‘Mark Ryan, okay, my wife will be happy I’ll be home very early’,’’ Power said.

‘‘Then I played Ken Sutcliffe and that was a tough game too and then I just thought ‘Okay one more game, one more game’.’’

Nichols said he was not disappointed with the result and instead was pleased with how far he had progressed in the tournament.

‘‘I knew I had to get away to a good start and then for some reason I just couldn’t get the grass on that side (indicating to the east), the wind was blowing across and Col handled it better than I did,’’ Nichols said.