Premier & Development OCTAGONAL – 15 & 16 February 2025
An outstanding performance by North Harbour’s premier women’s team was the centre’s highlight in the Octagonal representative tournament at the weekend.
There was another top performance, too, from the development men’s team in its competition at the Howick club and like the premier women at Browns Bay it comfortably topped its section.
However, these were offset by a disappointing return by the premier men’s team, and to a slightly lesser extent by the women’s development team. As a result Harbour missed out on being the overall winner of either competition.
The women’s premier team finished a comfortable first in its seven-match round-robin and its players, with the exception of singles specialist Millie Nathan, all had the distinction of going through the two days without defeat. The Sheryl Wellington-skipped four had a perfect record of seven wins, and the pair of Wendy Jensen and Lauren Mills suffered just the one blemish, a draw in the opening round against Pacific Barbarians. Sheryl and her three Colleen Rice, who was the model of consistency over the two days, appeared in all seven matches, while Robyne Walker, Keiko Kurohara and Theresa Rogers shared in the success with six, five and four wins respectively.
Millie was in the singles hot seat and had a moderate opening day, winning only one of her four matches. But, of course, she had the handicap of having to play with borrowed bowls, those of former club-mate Trish Croot, because of the theft of the set with which she won the world champion of champions title. And she did make a significant contribution on the second day, recovering to win all three of her matches, including beating the two most recent winners of the national singles title, Counties-Manukau’s Leanne Poulson in the sixth round and Waikato’s Deb White in the seventh.
Adding to the merit of the team’s success was that it did so without some of Harbour’s leading bowlers of recent years, the likes of Black Jack Selina Goddard and multiple centre champion Elaine McClintock.
The men’s premier team, alas, did not have the happiest of tournaments, finishing in seventh place. The cause was not helped by a 3-0 opening round defeat to Auckland, who had Birkenhead member, Black Jack Tony Grantham, as it singles player and then a third round defeat to the Pacific Barbarians team which included another Black Jack, Jaime Hill. The four, though, of Carlson Barnett, John Hindmarch, Steve Cox and Mark Rumble rallied to finish with four wins from its seven matches.
That was offset a little by the fine effort of the men’s development team, who finished top of its section, with consistent all-round performances. Andy Dorrance and Matthew Higginson, the one still a junior and the other just out of those ranks, lost only one of their matches, Peter and Chad Nathan won five of their seven matches, and Brendon McPhail, Nick Cape and Brian Wilson each had four wins.
The women’s development team suffered from a slow start with a 2-1 first round win over Far North the only team victory on the first day. There was a creditable recovery on the second day with a 2-1 team win over Northland and then a 3-0 whitewash of Counties-Manukau to secure fifth place. Adele Ineson won four of her matches, Judi Farkash, Glenda Rountree and Sharon Parker each won four, Judy Smith three while Jamie Chen and Jan Calcott each won two while Michelle Macdonald had just the one success.
The table below shows the centre finishing places.
Team and individual results are on BowlsHub with team ladders and the individual player ladders.
Results including team ladders and player ladders
Development Results
