Reporting on The National Fours – New Plymouth – by Lindsay Knight

  What loomed as a special day for the Takapuna club and Bowls North Harbour ended in something of a whimper at New Plymouth’s celebrated Paritutu club on Sunday.

 Having performed admirably to make the final, recovering after an early loss in qualifying rounds, Takapuna’s Wendy Jensen-skipped line-up of Lauren Mills, Robyne Walker and Adele Ineson were overcome at the last hurdle losing 26-4 to Dale Rayner, Kaaren Guilford, Reen Belliss and Linda Ralph.

  There were no excuses for the defeat. Takapuna was simply outplayed and eventually overwhelmed by a much superior team on the day. For Wendy and Robyne there was the added disappointment of being runner-up again in a national final. Last year they missed out in the national championship pairs.

 Up front Ralph and Belliss were ultra consistent and at three Guilford also chimed in with effective shots on the rare occasions Takapuna had the advantage, giving Rayner at skip the proverbial arm-chair ride.

 Wendy, by contrast, was always under pressure and forced to play more attacking shots than she would have preferred. Takapuna scored on only two of the 16 ends with Wendy responsible for all four shots. She sat out a Rayner shot bowl for a single on the fourth end and with yet another weighted shot converted the head to a three on the 11th end when Takapuna trailed 1-18.

  Still, it was a feat just to make the final and one for which Wendy, Lauren, Robyne and Adele should feel some pride. In the semi-finals they scored a meritorious 15-13 win over Takapuna’s current Black Jack Selina Goddard, who skipped a composite of North Harbour stalwart Trish Croot, Wellington’s Lisa White and Taranaki promising youngster Briar Atkinson.

  It was another point in favour of the Jensen line-up, in that this was an all-club combination in an era where hand-picked composites have been more and more dominant. The winning Rayner four, for instance, was a merger of two Wellingtonians, Rayner and Guilford, former Aucklander Belliss now in Wanganui and Auckland’s Ralph.

 One of the few all club sides to have succeeded at nationals in the past dozen of so years was in 2012 when the late Carole Fredrick, Ruth Lynch, Gayle Melrose and Lisa Helmling won the national fours for the Birkenhead club.

 Takapuna had another team in the women’s fours, the Keiko Kurohara-skipped line-up of Jamie Chen, Bet Leung and Connie Mathieson. It did well to qualify but lost in the first round of post-section to a powerful team skipped by Melrose and which contained former world champion Sharon Sims.

 In the men’s fours championship North Harbour’s best efforts came from a composite skipped by Graham Skellern, who officially remains a Takapuna member, and which included Helensville’s Bart Robertson. They made the quarter-finals.

 The illustrious Browns Bay four of Neil Fisher, John Walker, Brian Wilson and Colin Rogan made the last 16, and a Manly trio of Shaun Goldsbury, Andy Dorrance and Matt Higginson skipped by Takapuna’s Brent Malcolm made the last 32, losing to Skellern by only two shots.

 There was a link, too, for Takapuna and North Harbour in the men’s final. Philip Skoglund, one of the famous bowls family and who is a Takapuna member, was in the Manawatu four which finished runners-up to the composite four of Mike Galloway.