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Top bowls is increasingly seen as becoming the domain of youngsters, even teenagers, but with his performances at the national championships in Auckland this week Eddie Earwaker, at 90, is showing that the generation takeover is not yet complete.
Earwaker has been remarkably competitive at the championships, making post-section play in the pairs with his Takapuna clubmate Bill Ryan and then lining up as lead in fours' section play yesterday, competing at Howick against the likes of Peter Belliss, Petar Sain and Shannon McIlroy.
The fact Earwaker is 90 seems irrelevant to him.
"I've never subscribed to a view that bowls is just an old man's game," he says. "That's ridiculous. Playing three or four times a day in extreme heat is tough for anyone. It's a game for all ages and that's the beauty of it."
Earwaker feels no great disadvantage when he plays against bowlers in their 20s, or even as young as 15, as was the case in a Milford club tournament on the North Shore last month.
Earwaker came to bowls 28 years ago in his early 60s after a full sporting career in which he gained representative cricket honours (for South Canterbury against a MCC touring team of 1936 as a Timaru schoolboy), Southland (where test pace bowler Guy Overton was a clubmate) and North Otago. He was also a table tennis representative, an alpine skier and was the fourth nationally ranked squash player in the 1940s.
Transferring to Auckland in the 1950s with the Public Trust, he was still a premier club cricketer in his 40s with the Parnell club, when his team-mates included test players Geoff Rabone and Merv Wallace.
He thought his active playing days had ended in the early 60s, when he suffered hip trouble.
But he joined the Takapuna bowling club in 1980 and his only regret since has been he didn't take up the game sooner.
"I enjoy both the competitive part of bowls [and] the social side of it."
His prowess as a lead has seen him play with many notables at club level, in particular the nationally ranked Owen Smith and former All Black Graham Delamore. He has yet to land a centre title himself, but has lost count of his club championships. In 1991 he, Ryan and another Takapuna player, Warwick Wills, were runners-up in a national triples final to former test cricketer Peter Petherick.
Meanwhile a couple of notable octogenarians have also featured in the nationals: renowned former singles and pairs champion Ivan Kostanich, who turned 88 on New Year's Day, and Pakuranga's George Alley, who is 84 and won his major title in Thames 60 years ago.
In yesterday's section play, defending champion skips Jo Babich and Ryan Bester both dropped a game on the first day of the fours. However, they remain on target tomorrow to gain the four wins necessary to qualify for post-section play.
Both Babich and Bester said it was not hard to talk their respective women's and men's title teams into coming back to defend their titles.
"The girls [Bev Crowe, Jan Malcom and Rita Berridge] were keen to come back, naturally, after winning a title like that," Babich said, adding that it was nearly an instant decision after they won last year's title in Christchurch.
Bester's quartet are more far-flung in origin, with Canadian Bester playing and living in Sydney, third Bruce McNish also Australian-based, Nick Buttar hailing from Christchurch and lead Chris Le Lievre living in Auckland.
"We all talked about it and once Bruce said he wanted to come back over, it was all set in place in April," Bester said. "If you win something like this national title, you want to have the chance to defend it."
But both skips are cautious when predicting their destiny in this year's event. Babich was taking the "one game at a time" approach while
Bester pointed out the quality of the men's field.
"You've got Gary Lawson's team, Peter Belliss, Shane McIlroy, Richard Girvan - probably eight or 10 teams that could win it," Bester said.
