Report – BNH Champ of Champ Fours – 25th & 26th May 2024
Riverhead’s golden run in the Bowls North Harbour Centre’s champion of champion events continued at the weekend with success in the men’s fours to add to the pairs and triples wins earlier this month. In Sunday’s final on Mairangi Bay’s carpet, Steve Cox, Grant Goodwin, Duane McDonald and Lindsay Gilmore made light of the testing weather conditions to beat the host club’s Allan Langley, Peter Orgias, Kevin Robertson and Leon Wech 18-6.
There was a golden streak, as well, for three of Riverhead’s players, with Cox, Goodwin and Gilmore all achieving their fifth Harbour title to all earn gold stars an join club-mate Gordon Smith, who also reached that status in the winning pair and triple. Cox, Goodwin and McDonald also were part of one or both those wins, but McDonald was left after the latest win with just one short of his gold star. Cox and Goodwin, of course, came to the Harbour centre after distinguished records on the other side of the Harbour Bridge and Goodwin, indeed, has two bars to his Auckland gold star.
There could be little arguing Riverhead’s superiority in the fours event, with an impressive 18-8 win in the semi-final over a Helensville four containing such stars and centre title-holders as Carlson Barnett, David Eades and Bart Robertson.
In its semi-final Mairangi Bay beat Mahurangi East’s Peter Mansfield, Philip Payne, Ross Harris and Ken Withers, also by a 10-shot margin.
The qualifying rounds on Saturday started with a major boil-over when one of the favoured teams, Birkenhead’s Steve Yates, Daymon Pierson, Jack Huriwai and Jimmy Heath, all with a host of centre titles among them, were beaten 14-11 by Sunnybrae’s Bryan Lockyer, Keith Rolton, Tim Staines and Geoffrey Thomas.
It was almost a double for Mairangi Bay with the club’s four of Gaye Horne, Judi Farkash, Glenda Rountree and Rosemary Nicol winning the women’s title, beating Takapuna’s Keiko Kurohara, Adele Ineson, Lyn Calver and Jan Calcott 20-11 in the final.
The Mairangi four, well skipped by former Commonwealth Games fencer Horne, was too steady overall in the final, though there was some good form shown by Takapuna’s experienced Ineson. The loss left her a frustrating one win away from achieving her gold star, a wait which has lasted more than a decade.
It was Horne’s third title, but the first in open ranks for the three other Mairangi Bay players. Farkash, who is also a Takapuna member, came into the Mairangi Bay team as a replacement for an unwell Joy Watkinson.
Both semi-finals were keenly contested, with Mairangi Bay beating Orewa 13-10 and Takapuna beating Manly 13-11.
