Bowls: Blackjacks to playoff for four gold medals

Section play is all wrapped up at the Six Nations bowls event at Bowls Papanui in Christchurch today with the finalists of some disciplines had been decided on Tuesday.

All finals and play off games will be played at Bowls Papanui on Thursday and Friday.

In the Women's singles discipline the four countries that qualified all had three wins and medal play offs positions were decided on net total of shots. South Africa and Australia claimed the top two spots and will play for the gold medal, while New Zealand and Malaysia will compete for the third spot on Friday commencing at 12.15pm.

In the Women's fours the New Zealand and Welsh team had two good wins on Day 4; these wins catapulted both teams to the top of the table.

The New Zealand fours had a great day, beating Scotland 29-11 and then went on to defeat Malaysia 26-5. Wales had a 22-8 win over South Africa and then took down Australia 19-15. The bronze play off will be between Scotland who had three draws in their qualifying games and South Africa. All Women's Fours finals Play will commence at 8.30am on Thursday (Day 5).

The final Men's pairs qualifying game was a top of the table clash between New Zealand and Malaysia. New Zealand won 19-15 with Mike Nagy and Shannon McIlroy performing consistently against their opposition. The pair were 8-3 up before Malaysia got on the board. Malaysia fought back in the middle stages of the game to bring the score to 15-12 before New Zealand pulled away again. Australia played Wales and they were ahead all the way until the 11th end when Wales levelled the score at 8 all. The last seven ends went mainly to Wales and the final score was 17-9 to Wales. Scotland scored freely in the first
ends against South Africa and took the game 18-9. The gold and silver and bronze matchups will be a repeat of these games.

The New Zealand Men's triple team, Andrew Kelly, Paul Girdler and Ali Forsyth retained their second slot after defeating Malaysia 20 -12. The team supported each other well and didn't give Malaysia to many chances. Australia retained their top spot defeating Wales 18 -10.