Naenae hails Heald after fours win

Press, 13 January 1987, Page 36

Naenae hails Heald after fours win

PA Wellington The Naenae Bowling . Club’s president, Mick Heald, added another bar to his plethora of nicknames when he skipped his rink to a crushing victory in the final of the fours at the Rothmans national championships at Wellington yesterday. At his own club, he was called Meatpack Mick after 27 wins in mid-week one-day galas stocked his freezer for ' all; of last summer. - During the nationals, they began to call him the Wizard of Naenae on account of his whispy, grey goatie beard. As he bowled through to the final, they called him Houdini on account of the escape acts he performed in the quarter-finals on Sunday. At the Naenae club last evening, it was Mick Heald, “King of Naenae,” such was the ease of his 34-13 win against the more-favoured Paritutu skip, Dave Baldwin. With an audacious drive on the twenty-second end, Heald, one-down on the head, slammed the. jack into the ditch for. a fiveshot advantage. Baldwin, winner, of three national titles in the past, merely smiled in appreciation, played his last bowl and conceded defeat three ends short of the scheduled finish.

Audacity and confid-

ence were the hallmarks of Heald’s and Naenae'S game. This was amazing considering the inexperience of the combination alongside Baldwin’s four which included the national coaching director and four-time championship victor, John Murtagh, their Paritutu clubmate, Brian Baldwin, and the seasoned Rotorua bowler, Sid Giddy. Heald’s four had at lead John Aplin, aged 27, and at No, 2, Graham Gifford, aged 40, both juniors. The most experienced was the Nb. 3, Harold Greenfield, aged 70, winner of six Wellington centre titles but whose best previous effort at the nationals had been with Heald in reaching the last eight in ths fours- in Wellington four years ago. Heald’s victorious four was brought together mainly to give the two younger players top-level experience. They appeared together for the first time in the Wellington Christmas fours and failed to reach post-sec-tion competition, their three losses each -being by a single point But at the nationals, Heald’s fqur won all eight section matches, the last on the toss of a coin when the result was irrelevant and then embarked on the sudden-death post-section '

run which culminated in Naenae winning its first national title,