Update 25^th March 2014.

Congratulations to Northern’s Woman’s second division interclub team in defending their New Zealand title. For the second time are New Zealand Champions. 

Commiserations to the Division A men’s team who finished a very close and very creditable second.

Comment on Bowls   by Denis Duffy.

Manawatu results at last weekend’s National Interclub finals amounted to a pretty solid follow-up to the recent successes in the Hexagonal competition. The Northern men couldn’t have gone closer to pulling off the big one with it all coming down to the last minute action witnessed by the crowd around the Palmerston North back green. They were watching Terry Johnson come agonisingly close to nailing the win over former BlackJack Jamie Hill that would have clinched the title for Northern. Terry forced a draw in his usual deliberate and unflappable style, but unfortunately a win was required to deny the popular winners from Alexandra in the far South. Meanwhile, at Northern, the local Women’s side were adding another credit to their long list of achievements by winning the B Grade Women’s title. Next weekend sees the culmination of the representative season with our Men’s and Women’s sides looking well prepared to pursue their respective National Inter-Centre titles. This event invites entries from all Centres, so no-one has pre-qualified and no-one has been eliminated, thus making form on the day and over the crucial weekend all-important.

As a former selector, I know only too well that picking the Masters team each year is a real challenge and the teams selected are often contentious. This is because the over 60 age-group for both Men and Women is an area where often the best players don’t necessarily overshadow the others, and there is considerable depth of worthy contenders. These players aren’t necessarily top performers in Centre events, and then the selector has to be aware of new arrivals into this more venerable age-group. This year Neil Gordon was such a player, and eagle-eyed Selector Terry Puklowski was able use him well as Skip of the Triples. Both Men’s and Women’s teams finished runners-up in their respective tournaments ,which is a very creditable result. Wellington and Hutt Valley field separate sides in these much anticipated events, and I know that Taranaki, Hawkes Bay and Gisborne-East Coast remain disappointed that they don’t have a starter’s spot in these events or an equivalent tournament locally.  Our runner-up results were both very much a solid team performance with outstanding contributions coming from Singles player Bev Budd for the Women and the Eric Watson/Ron Henn Pair for the Men. Eric has a long and distinguished record in this event, as has Brian Henn, who took on the challenging  Singles berth this time.

For a club to reach 125 years of existence while still strong and in good heart is a worthy achievement, and this impressive milestone has just been marked by our oldest club in Palmerston North. Neil Richardson mentioned at the excellent dinner which marked the occasion that the club has always excelled in the three key areas of quality greens, quality administration and quality competition for those so inclined, and this is very true. I know that I’m proud to be a member of this outstanding club because the really important things are always done and done well. This was exemplified by the way in which longest serving members and Life Members were paid due respect at the dinner. Bruce Heaphy is currently the longest playing member, and it was remarkable to hear him recall playing a casual game on the club greens in far-off days as a mere youth when the greens were located elsewhere in town. This game occurred in 1950, before even Centre President Phil, who was in attendance, might have sneaked in for a game at Northern when the older members weren’t looking. It’s worth recalling that in those days younger players were strongly frowned upon, with many clubs refusing members under the age of thirty.

Full marks to Philip Skoglund for his wonderful initiative in organising the centre’s first fast Fives tournament last week. This is a format that clearly satisfies the often stated need to speed the game up, and what we saw of it on TV late last year was genuinely exciting. I’m sure we’ll see more fast Fives next season, but the real challenge is to somehow encourage this sort of thing without alienating the traditional players who enjoy the longer formats. The ongoing pre-eminence of the Taranaki Open Fours is sufficient evidence of that!

Final mention must go to Barry Wynks and Mark Noble, who by all accounts performed well enough in Melbourne recently to make it clear they will be genuine medal contenders at Glasgow later in the year. This is no surprise in the Manawatu, and it was great to see Mark making a huge contribution to his Club’s fine performance last weekend, thereby overcoming the obvious difficulties of switching between greens in different countries and running at dramatically differing speeds.

Denis Duffy

Thanks Denis.