BOWLS - Visitors have been rolling up for unofficial tournaments

With Garry Houlahan
I trust all bowlers have enjoyed a pleasant Christmas and New Year break and you are now all fit and raring to go on the 2009 tournament schedule. There has not been a lot of activity over the holiday period although some clubs have been catering for the crowds of visitors with unofficial tournaments and roll ups. Good on you.
Finale for the yearThe last Hams and Lambs before Christmas was played at Dargaville and the winners with four wins and 25 ends were Joyce Osborne, Guy Fowlie, Murray Liddell and Judy Jones while second were Allan McKinnon, Margaret Smytton, Norm Vranjes and Jeanette Marsters who also had 4 wins but just 21 ends. A good finale for the year.
Warm-up workedThe major tournament over the holiday period was the Kensington Women 2x4x2 Pairs and the winners of the top division were Maureen and Graham Parker ahead of Dinkie Fischer and Fred Ogilvie in second and Eileen Riceman and Len Edge in third spot.
In the second division, top spot went to George Lyddiard and Caroline Downs who did not manage a win on the first day but came out on the second day to notch four straight wins while second went to Trevor Mark and Dawn Bates.
There were also two consolation prizes to the top qualifiers on each green who did not get into the prize money and these went to Joe Thorburn and Jude Ganley from the top green and Sam Nelson and Sally Stirling from the bottom green.
This tournament attracted a full field of 32 starters, which was very pleasing. It was well positioned just prior to the nationals starting in Auckland and so many bowlers took the opportunity to have some hard match play before going off to win the national title.
Time on their handsThe men's New Year Pairs has been run by the Kensington club for many years and I think they would have been slightly disappointed with only 16 entries for this year's event. Admittedly, the nationals started in Auckland the next day and this would have ruled quite a few players out of contention but there must still have been an awful lot of bowlers sitting around doing nothing on New Year's Day.
The winners were George Lyddiard and Graham Parker who carried on with their good form from the mixed pairs earlier in the week. They managed four wins, 34 ends and 74 shots while Mike Butler and Barry Moore also managed four wins and 34 ends but their shot score was just 60 and so they missed out on the major prize.
Third went to Peter Nicholas and Sam Nelson while fourth were Sam Prasad and Fred Kirk.
Women on a rollSome good results from the early round of the nationals in Auckland. As usual the women players were to the fore and in the singles Sally Stirling (Te Kopuru), Helen Pike (Kensington), Trish Murray (Kensington), Janice McLean (Kensington), Sue Wightman (Hakaru), Maree Attwood (Kensington) all qualified in the singles as did Bunty Barron and Jean Huxtable from Kaitaia. Men to qualify in the singles were Paul Yovich (Whangarei), Kevin Robinson (Maungaturoto) and Chris Gore (Mangawhai). Another familiar name to qualify was Russell Hocking formerly from Mangawhai and now playing out of North Harbour.
In the pairs, women to qualify were Maureen Parker/Helen Pike, Ann Muir/Jude Ganley, Maree Attwood/Margaret Gurney, Anne Bateman/Trish Murray, Caroline Downs/Nancy Jujnovich all from Kensington plus Sophie Anderson/Glenda Norris-Palmer (Composite) and Sally Stirling/Etsuko Mackesseck (Te Kopuru).
The list of qualifiers in the men's pairs was pretty slim with just Paul Yovich/Geoff Trappitt getting through although this was a good effort by two academy players. A couple of names well known to readers who also got through were Peter Doreen and Paul Huxtable from Kaitaia and Stu MacDonald (ex Leigh)/Warren Seeque now out of Warkworth.