Caversham four finally scores on West Coast

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 24

Caversham four finally scores on West Coast

From

KEVIN McMENAMIN,

in Greymouth

As one of the most distant teams of the 168 entries Jack McGregor’s Caversham (Dunedin) four was a de. serving winner for more reasons than one of the South Island bowls tournament which ended on the R.S.A, green in Greymouth yesterday.

It was the fourth successive year that McGregor and his team of three brothers, Norman, Bernard and Harold Thorn, had made the more than 800 km trek across the island to compete on the West Coast and their win :n yesterday’s final was an improvement on the third equal placing they filled three years ago. McGregor whose sound record also includes a victory

in the fours at the big Oamaru Easter tournament, convincingly beat Trevor Flaus’s New Brighton team of Dave Bertie, Ron Gash and Les Bertenshaw in the final. The score was 24-15. Rain delayed the start of play for about an hour but the remarkable recovery rate of the West Coast cotula greens was again in evidence as the pools of water were swept away and in a very short time the game was able to begin, with the dampness hardly affecting the running of the bowls.

Flaus’s team began well and after four ends it was ahead, 7-0. McGregor closed the gap with a four and a two, but a three on the eighth end, when the Caversham back half missed with

four drives, put Flaus clear again, 11-6. But then the complexion of the game changed completely. The Caversham four wrested an advantage that was built on superior drawing in all positions and Flaus won only one of the next nine ends — and this was when Flaus himself rested a bowl with his last delivery on the fourteenth end to go three down to one up. By the eighteenth end, McGregor, who was again particularly well served by his lead, Norman Thom, was in front, 21-12, and ulaying the twenty-first end Flaus, at 15-22 behind, needed a seven to force an extra end. When the count was out of the question, Flaus burnt the head with a clean drive to

the kitty but he was not so accurate on the replay and McGregor added two more points to win, 24-15. At the presentations, McGregor declared that he would be back next year, if only to return the Peter Dawson Trophy, which has gone to the winner of the West Coast tournament for 64 years. This year the West Coast event doubled as the South Island championshin, with sponsorship being provided by Teachers Whisky. Just about all the other competing teams, regardless of the stage at which they were eliminated, made the same promise. The popularity of the event is fair testimony to the efforts, both in hospitality and efficiency, put unto the organisation."