One newcomer in bowls team for Games

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 33

One newcomer in bowls team for Games

PA Auckland Manawatu’s Peter Shaw is the only newcomer to international bowls in the New Zealand men’s team named yesterday for the Commonwealth Games in Auckland next year. Shaw toured internally with the Emerging Players’ team last season and has just returned from the emerging team’s disastrous Australian tour. The national selection panel convener, Kerry Clark, admitted the naming of the No. 2 in the four probably came down to a choice between Shaw, the national singles champion, Gary Lawson (Canterbury), and Paul Wilton (Hawke’s Bay). •‘Lawson and Wilton were probably the unlucky ones but we have no qualms about Peter Shaw,” he said.

The other six players named were all predictable. Dunedin’s lan Dickison will, as expected, defend the

singles title he won at the 1986 Edinburgh Games. Wellington’s Maurice Symes has been named as skip for Rowan Brassey in a pair which appeals as the New Zealanders’ main gold medal hope.

Dunedin’s Stewart McConnell will lead the four followed by Shaw, and the highly experienced combination of Kevin Darling (Dunedin) at three and Phil Skoglund (Manawatu) at skip. The former world champion, Peter Beiliss, has been bypassed. Beiliss said last week he was not hopeful of making the team after competing in South Africa in 19?5. Since 1982 the Commonwealth Games Federation’s code of conduct has forbidden competitors in Commonwealth Games sports from touring the republic. Beiliss went to South Africa as a professional and was not aware of the code’s existence until last month.

But he said yesterday that from his recent reading of the code it appeared he would not be able to compete in the Games. “Obviously, I’m disappointed and it’s a bit ironic to be banned in your own country,” Beiliss said last week.

Meanwhile, Scotland’s Richard Corsie will be in New Zealand well before the Games to check Dickison’s form. The world indoor champion, Corsie — already named as Scotland’s singles player for the Games — has been secured to play Dickison in the $5OOO winner-take-all Postbank Challenge at the Royal Oak Indoor Centre on November 22. The clash will be a rematch of the pair’s Edinburgh Games encounter in 1986 when Corsie, then a 19-year-old postman, was Dickison’s final obstacle to clinching the gold medal. Dickison won and his last game against Ireland’s Stan Espie was academic.