Bleak week for Canty surf clubs

Press, 4 March 1983, Page 19

Bleak week for Canty surf clubs

By

RAY CAIRNS

Although th. Paekakariki beach will be remembered fondly for the fine weather in which it basked last week. Canterbury lifeguards will not have much other reason to recall the Westpac national surf lifesaving championships. Though the St Kilda swimmers, senior and junior, predictably performed very worthily, there were very lean pickings for the South Island.

Indeed, the only senior victories were to Geoff Walker (Waimairi). but even his long board and magnificent iron man wins paled beside his five titles of the previous year.

Superb as was Gary Connor’s win in the junior belt race, that success by the strapping W.aikuku Beach 17-year-old was the only junior win to the Canterbury area.

And in the women's grade, the South Brighton six-place team and the Waimairi surf team were the only champions.

It was, in truth, a bleak year for Canterbury clubs. It only requires a brief rundown of the placings to illustrate the point: Walker, besides his personal successes. was third with Greg Bevin in the double-ski; Chris Ellis, of Waikuku Beach, was second by a touch in the senior belt race; Carl Immers and John Dimick (Taylors Mistake) were second in the senior tube rescue, Stephen Ward and. Lachie Marshall (New Brighton) third.

The South Brighton drill experts were third in the sixman. second in the march past; proud, experienced Taylors Mistake could only manage a march past third

placing from all the drill events.

It was worse among the juniors. Connor apart, there was only a fine second placing to Karl Gallagher, his club-mate, in the beach sprint and Gallagher is still a junior next year. The Taylors Mistake six-man was third, but slumped astonishingly in the four-man, leading the qualifiers brilliantly with 2.70 — a point clear of anyone else — yet scoring 5.42 deductions in the final. There were some distressed — and perplexed — lads at that result.

For providing the interdistrict champions. Canterbury women were not up to par, either. Certainly, South Brighton performed splendidly: first, by more than two points, in the six-place; second, a mere .16 points in arrears, in the four third in the march past. And that club’s Jo Barry was a regu-

lar figure on the victory dais, for she and Pat Horne were third in the tube rescue as well. .

Finally, the Waimairi women added a third placing in the four-place to their surf race performance. There were, of course, some hard luck stories to be told, and foremost of those would be Immers slipping as he was striving in the tube rescue against Kevin Stanley and Brett Marshall, of Waihi; and of the New Brighton sixplace women’s team. The cruel luck of the deep line operator standing in a pot-hole cost it 10 points in the final; the deductions of the heat in that section would have given New Brighton second place, and that with a virtually new team to replace the retired champions of the recent past.

“Why?" was an oft-asked question of the continuing successes of the North Island lifeguards. Certainly, population must be a factor, for with that comes increased and fierce competition, especially in the Auckland. Bay of Plenty and Gisborne areas.

But is it perhaps, too. that it is a time of change among Canterbury clubs. The New Brighton women, as mentioned, are a new lot. and that club’s juniors who performed so well the previous year are now seniors, one of them the worthy Marshall. The Taylors Mistake seniors, who have written some of the most glittering pages in the Nelson Shield history, as well as the other drill events, must surely be nearing their ends. Darryl Neate, perhaps the most remarkable all-rounder of the lot, Geoff Le Cren. Paul Carpinter, Errol Hunter (who was not at the championships); They have all been here and there, and done this and that, for so long. Was it something about going once too often to the well? Yet one is reluctant to speculate that the end is nigh, for Taylors Mistake, fourth, still drilled better than any bar the champions, New Plymouth Old Boys. There is some promise for the future. The solidly-built, strong-finishing Gallagher is poised to become the champion, not the runner-up next year, Marshall started his senior career brightly with an eighth in the surf race as well as his tube placing; lan MacDonald, of Taylors Mistake, was second in his surf race heat and has two junior seasons still to go. But the prospects of a Canterbury club unseating the likes' of Waikanae, of Gisborne, or the Waihi club for the Allan Gardner Trophy which symbolises over-all club superiority, can not be considered bright.