Bowls: Youth and old age conquer greens as one

By LINDSAY KNIGHT

The extraordinary ability of lawn bowls as a sport to encompass all shapes and all ages is being vividly illustrated at the Takapuna club where a 15-year-old, Michael Parry-Crooke, is trading shots with two distinguished octogenarians, Colin Snedden and Graham Delamore.

Parry-Crooke, a fourth-former at Rosmini College, joined the Takapuna club this year when he answered a recruitment advertisement.

He finds nothing unusual competing alongside former New Zealand test cricketer Snedden and former All Black Delamore.

For Parry-Crooke, there is no terse dismissal of bowls as old man marbles.

Attracted to the sport because his slight stature makes it difficult for him to find a place in either rugby or soccer teams, Parry-Crooke says: "My grandmother plays and when the Takapuna club came to our school in March looking for players I thought it would be fun.

"And it is, and it's harder than it looks. But you can play it at any age and you don't have to be a certain size to be good at it."

Parry-Crooke, who has already represented the North Harbour centre at under- 19 level and was in the Rosmini team which won the inaugural Anne Hartley Trophy for Harbour secondary schools competition, has already played with Delamore in interclub matches and has received an unqualified acclaim for his potential.

"He's got it all there if he wants to go on with it," says Delamore, 82, who took up bowls in his late 30s and went on to win three Auckland centre titles and three runner-up prizes.

"And he's certainly at the right age to start the sport."

An All Black first five-eighths in South Africa in 1949, Delamore combined bowls for many years with rugby coaching.

A former physical education teacher at Takapuna Grammar School, he had charge of first XV sides which produced three All Blacks, 1955-56 loose forward John Buxton, 1961-63 wing Don McKay and 1974-76 prop Kerry Tanner.

But bowls provided him with as much pleasure and satisfaction as rugby.

"You can get as much of an adrenalin rush from bowls as playing All Black rugby.

"And with bowls you have a sustained two or three hours of it," he says.

Snedden, a medium pace bowler against England in 1947, turns 85 in January.

Unlike Parry-Crooke, though, he had a late entry to bowls, starting only 12 years ago because for many years his summers were spent as a radio cricket commentator.

And in the winter he also commentated on rugby.

He was the interviewer when Peter Jones, at the end of the fourth test at Eden Park against the Springboks in 1956, made his famous "I'm absolutely buggered" remark.

"For 40 years my summers and winters, too, were spent commentating from Eden Park," Snedden says.

"But Michael's certainly not too young to start a game as difficult as bowls can be."