BOWLS - Women shine at Intercentre finals and just miss big prizes

With Garry Houlahan
The Intercentre finals were played at Palmerston North last weekend and Northland put in some good efforts. The open women's team came second as did the development women while the development men came fourth.
I understand that at the end of day one the development men were leading but the wheels fell off on the Sunday and they dropped to fourth. It shows that you have to keep your concentration throughout at this level of bowls and you can not afford to have a bad round.
Both women's teams were always in contention but could not quite get to the top of the tree. Both were just one win away from taking the major prize so it was a very good effort on their part.
Congratulations to all the players on making the finals and performing so creditably.
* Charity success
Another charity day of bowls was held at Bowls Whangarei last week and the proceeds went to ward one facilities at Whangarei Hospital. This ward is the one where we all go to have our hips and knees replaced so quite a number of bowlers can relate to this. The day raised $500 to help the patients recovery and this was well received by the staff of the ward.
The day's bowls was spoiled somewhat by early morning rain but those present still managed to get three rounds in and three teams came up with three wins each so a countback was required. The winning team was Coe van Haaften, Steve Smith and Steve Mitchell from Kensington with 3 wins and 46 points, second went to Laurie Mutch, Pam Mutch and Bruce Gover [Maungatapere] with 3 wins and 37 points while third was a local Bowls Whangarei combination of Ann Field, Reg Carmont and Bert Griffin with 3 wins and 24 points.
* Support tourneys
This weekend is Easter and traditionally this has been a big bowls weekend with the Kensington and Dargaville clubs holding men's fours tournaments and the women having a couple of tournaments - originally at the former Whangarei women's club - and since their merger with Kensington the events have been held at Bowls Whangarei. Times are changing however and the Dargaville tournament is in danger of being cancelled with only a handful of entries and the Kensington tournament now reduced to an any-combination tournament following a couple of years of below-par entries. The women's tournaments have virtually no entries at all at present and will be cancelled in all probability. The time may not be far off when bowlers will be having a weekend off over Easter unless we support those clubs putting on tournaments at this time.
* Mighty Arapohue
The Arapohue Bowling Club held their annual Ken Bradley Memorial Triples on the weekend and once again it was a mighty tournament. Teams come from far and wide to play in this event and everybody thoroughly enjoys themselves. The winners of the event this year were the Kensington team of Ian McMurchy, Coe van Haaften and Mark de Lacy who defeated a Thames Valley team skipped by regular visitor Gerald Slattery. Third equal went to teams skipped by Tom Webb [Arapohue] and Vic Moffett [Te Kopuru]. The plate was won by Tom Chapman's composite team from a Frankton Railway entered in the name of J. Tanoa while the Flight was won by a composite team under Sam Nelson from Graham Gallant's Kamo team. The consolation event for qualifiers who lost their first qualifying game went to W. Kidd [Thames Valley] from G. Moran [Pauanui] in second place with G. Lawrence [composite] and O. Sutton [Putaruru] equal third. You can see from the club's mentioned above that the visitors had a pretty good time of it and hopefully they will be back next year.
* Bring your own
The final open Centre championship this season is for the junior singles, which is to be played on the weekend after Easter. Entries close for this event on Thursday so if you wish to enter you had better hurry up and get your name in. As always you are expected to bring a marker with you and it has been noticeable at various singles events that many players do not bother to do this. You can not expect clubs to keep on providing markers for you - bring your own.
* Congrats first years
The First Year Singles was completed on Saturday and as reported last week a very good entry of 40 new bowlers. Competition was very close with just one shot between first and second in both the men and women winner and runner-up. The men's competition was won by Brian Caddy from Kamo with 4 wins and a differential of plus 50 while second went to Irwin Van Pelt from Maungaturoto who also had 4 wins and a differential of plus 49. The women's event told a similar story with the winner being Yvonne Murphy from One Tree Point with four wind and a differential of plus 63 and the runner up was Diane Strawbridge from Kensington also with 4 wins and a differential of plus 62. Well done to all who competed and we hope to see them continuing their careers.