Emerging bowlers feel heat

Press, 11 December 1989, Page 26

Emerging bowlers feel heat

A highly successful New Zealand Emerging Players bowls group came to Canterbury after not being beaten in seven South Island centres and immediately felt the heat in the province as it crashed to two losses in three encounters.

Playing a Canterbury Coun-try-West Coast combined team at Leeston, it was beaten 2-1. Then, against a Canterbury - Marlborough selection on Saturday morning, it was hammered 3-0. In the afternoon, it fought back against a Canterbury team to reverse that result and take the match 3-0, in a performance that was a display of gritty determination in the face of a tour that could have turned sour in its final throes.

The emerging players team comprised: Ross Brown (aged 30), Dunedin; David Clark (21), Auckland; Fred Ellison (42) Hawke’s Bay; Gary Lawson (23), Christchurch; Ray Park (30), Wanganui; Andrew Seator (30), Palmerston North; Dean Stewart (26), Counties.

Results on its South Island tour were: v. South Otago 3-0; v. Southland 3-0; v. Otago Central v. Dunedin 42, v. North Otago 3-0, v. South Canterbury 3-0, v. Canterbury Country 1-2, v. CanterburyMarlborough 0-3, v. Canterbury 3-0.

On a perfect green at Leeston, Clark played singles against the West Coast’s Gary Pascoe and went down 7-25. The pair of Lawson and Stewart lost to the Southbridge pair, Colin Lowery and Bob Patterson, 11-19. Then the four of Ellison, Brown, Park and Seator met a combined team of Ces Pablecheque (West Coast), Alister Keith (Ashburton), Ray Milne (Ashburton) and Steven Godfrey (Woolston Park). In a tight, low-scoring match, the combined team won 18-11. At the end of what must have been an arduous tour, the emerging players were seemingly unprepared for the pace of Christchurch’s Canterbury club green and took a real hammering. None of the

combination got within half a dozen points of their Canter-bury-Marlborough opponents. Gary Lawson came up against his playing soul mate, Andy Curtain, of the Linwood club, and crashed. Curtain got a hold in the game he would not relinquish and won 25-15.

The pair of Brown and Park met the Marlborough combination E. Doggett and J. Mears and again the result was clear cut. The Marlborough pair won 25-16. The emerging four, Stewart, Clark, Seator, and Ellison met the Canterbury-Marl-borough group Craig Lange, Peter Webb, Graham Stanley and Bill Fiecken and lost 1019.

That put them on their mettle and in the afternoon, having come to terms with the green, they turned the results completely around. Lawson started by winning his singles against arch club rival, Bruce McNish, of Spreydon, 25-21.

Lawson led well until the 12th end, when the score was 12-7. By the 14th McNish had

drawn level at 12-12 and then went ahead, to 17-12 on the 18th.

Lawson fought back from 15-21 down on the 22nd end to win on the 28th.

The emerging pair met and dealt sternly with Stewart Buttar (Burnside) and Ken Watson (Linwood), 23-17. Then the four, meeting a combined team of Lange, Webb, Curtain and Ray Hunt (Spreydon), got on a roll and blasted their way home, 25-8, after leading 10-1 on the sixth end.

The manager of the emerging players, Mr Kerry Clark described the tour as “all positive.” He said it had “brought the players on no end” and emphasised the need for it to be repeated.

Mr Clark considered the tour to be a fine public relations effort for the game, especially since it went to smaller centres where fewer players of note were seen. The consequence was, he said, that many people made the effort to go and watch the tourists play.