Grant Hassall
Even after an impressive opening session, Taranaki was unable to contain Waikato in a representative bowls fixture at the Paritutu Indoor Complex at the weekend.
The visitors won both the men’s and women’s sections nine games to six to comfortably retain the Ron Buchan Plate.
Perhaps Taranaki used the fixture as more of a trial than Waikato did. Waikato arrived with just one reserve in each gender, whereas the Taranaki men had four and the women three. And they were all used throughout the weekend over the five rounds.
Craig De Faria, who admittedly has had the advantage of playing regularly at Paritutu during the winter, returned a 100% win-record. But he was only used in three games.
The better Waikato performers were Debbie White, the reigning Dominion singles titleholder, who won four games from five skipping the pair, and Malcolm Moore.
Moore, who actually played a couple of tournaments with Buchan years ago, impressed as a cool customer. He has “19 or 20” Waikato titles and certainly did well to craft four wins from five games too.
Taranaki looked clearly superior in round one, before Waikato found their gear.
Jasmine Merrick and Amanda Crehan both gave good accounts of themselves, with three wins from four games, while in the men, after De Faria, Kurt Smith and Bart Robertson both won two matches out of three.
Although the defeats were by narrow margins, Camron Horo and Daryl Read, who some observers had labelled as heading towards the certainty category for the seven-man intercentre, both managed just one win from four outings each.
But with a truckload of bowls in the coming months, players in both squads have plenty of opportunities. So, too, do the selectors, coupled with the knowledge of combinations from the Waikato and earlier Whanganui fixtures.
A moment’s silence was held before the commencement of play on Sunday to remember Tower’s Russell Hardy, a double gold star holder, who died on Saturday after a short illness.
Hardy commenced bowls in 1983 and, after making the Taranaki junior singles final in 1988, was thrust into the senior 15-man side later that year. It was a rude awakening, with Hardy receiving plenty of criticism.
“He’s useless,” one experienced team-mate said to another in the opening game which, despite the comment, ended in victory over Whanganui.
Possessing a good attacking game and confidence in his own style, Hardy accumulated 11 Taranaki titles, the best of which was the 2003 Open fours. Hardy skipped his Nolantown side, which had narrowly lost the final the previous year.
Hardy’s other Taranaki titles came in the champion-of-champions (singles 2001, pairs 1998, 2002 and 2004, triples 2006 and fours 1998 and 2016), the open triples (1994) and the New Year fours (2002 and 2005).
He became a regular in the Taranaki representative side, despite the initial scruples, and was part of the Taranaki-Wanganui side that won the national Super Eights in 1999.
In later years Hardy became an advisor to the rep team and then men’s selector.
Article Courtesy of The Taranaki Daily News.
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