Spreydon wins sevens bowls final

Press, 19 December 1988, Page 27

Spreydon wins sevens bowls final

it was a long, hot day Spreydon’s bowlers had to withstand on their way to the final of the Christchurch Centre’s Trustbank Canterbury Super Sevens, but when the heat was finally off in the early evening on Saturday, they were smiling, because they had become the first winners of the new-format club competition.

Spreydon first beat Burnside in the morning in section two. In the afternoon, it downed South Brighton, the section one finalist.

The final was an absorbing series of games; Spreydon won, 2-1. However, its fours team conceded the match shortly after 5 p.m., the moment the pairs team had clinched the match win, by beating the South Brighton pair, 23-19. Earlier, Bruce McNish had beaten the previously unbeaten South Brighton singles player, Graham Stanley, 30-25.

The singles was the most extraordinary of games. McNish made a flying start with threes on the first two ends and after Stanley had scored a two, added three more on the fourth to lead, 92.

From that point the game see-sawed bewilderingly. Stanley took a four on the sixth end to go ahead 11-7; McNish drew level on the eleventh end and then Stanley rapidly went to a 22-14 lead by the fourteenth. But, McNish, who had been commenting about being unable to judge the pace of the green in the first half, put all that behind him and scored,

successively, two threes and four twos to go to 28-22. Stanley pulled three back, but McNish ended it with singles on the last two ends.

The game as notable for the fine drawing of both bowlers and their alternate scoring of clusters of shots, as each found touch on particular ends to outmanoeuvre the other.

McNish completed the formidable task of being the first player to beat Stanley in the competition, after being moved from skipping the pairs for Saturday's two matches.

By comparison with the singles game, the pairs encounter was a dour, lowscoring struggle, yet it was not without its colour. In winning, 23-19, the Spreydon pair played slightly more consistent bowls. The colour was provided largely by the South Brighton skip, Morgan Moffat.

This is not to take anything away from the fine bowling of Terry Darby, skipping, and Roger Norton. First one and then the other pair took shot, end by end, until Moffat and the lead, Barry Jones, took a four on the seventh end to lead, 9-3. Darby took the lead again on the thirteenth and led until the twenty-first end, when Moffat went to 18-16, with a three. Darby recouped that deficit immediately with three on the next end and from 21-18, he held on to down Moffat.

While Darby maintained his consistency under pressure, Moffat could not quite

lay his bowls on the spot in the last few ends, and even his pinpoint driving could not save him in the last stages.

But it was that same driving and Moffat’s frequent tailing of his shot that added the colour to a match that would otherwise have remained dour, although fascinating. The fours game had promise of being equally as fascinating to the final end, with Ray Hunt’s Spreydon team level-pegging for the first five ends, until he slipped away to an 11-8 lead on the twelfth. However, Meier caught and passed Hunt, going to a 15-12 lead on the fifteenth, at which point it was conceded by Spreydon.

In the section two play-off in the morning, Spreydon beat Burnside, 2-1. McNish despatched Stewart Buttar by the relatively wide margin of 31-20, but there were anxious moments for him in his singles win, especially when Buttar seemed to be making a concentrated recovery to peg back McNish's 16-5 lead from the eleventh end.

Buttar got to 9-16, but a McNish three on the fourteenth put paid to any hopes he might have had of catching up. and McNish maintained at least a 10-point lead to the end.

Next to finish its game was the fours, and it featured perhaps the finest piece of

bowling of the day. Robin

Howman’s Burnside four led early and went to 17-9, before Hunt’s team crawled back into the game, winning every end from 15 to 20 to trail 1617 on the twentieth.

Spreydon held two shots when Howman prepared to deliver his last bowl. Unfazed by the situation, Howman slotted his shot into the winning position, to take the match, 18-16. But it was to no avail for his team’s chances, for the pairs match, still in progress, was clearly going Spreydon’s way, with Darby leading Ken Prebble handsomely. Darby won, 26-13, and assured his . team of a final place.