Manurewa Mens - National Interclub 7's campaign

Firstly our Team would like to acknowledge the support of the Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club & Manurewa Cosmopolitan Bowling Club for their support in getting our team to Christchurch and allowing us to compete in this very prestigious competition. Looking across the sections we could see the competition was going to be at the highest standard as many Intercentre Representatives were present in their club sides.

Our committed support team of Annie, Bev, John, Logan, Fran & Ken arrived on Wednesday and we do appreciate them travelling to Christchurch to support us; we really enjoyed their company during the tournament.

Our Team :

Singles – Roger Andrew (4 wins out of 6)

Pairs – Shane Drabble / Steve Bicknell (2 wins out of 6)

Fours – David Clark / Chris Warren / Bill Jones / Paul Howe (4 wins out of 6)

Manager / Selector / Player – Bill Jones

Day 1

Round 1 – Off to a great start at Fendalton with Roger winning his first singles game and the Fours had a strong showing beating a formidable Thames Coast. Pairs has a bye.

Round 2 – Roger had a bye in the singles. The pairs starting brilliantly winning comfortably. Unfortunately the four’s were unable to complete a clean sweep on the first day going day to Dunedin’s North East Valley.

Day 2

Rounds 3 / 4 / 5 – Playing at Hornby; No byes today so we looked forward to a full 3 rounds and lots of points up for grabs. These points proved to be tough to get with the fours winning 2 / 3. Roger won 1 / 3 but a notable victory against Dunedin’s Mike Kernaghan showed that our form was good enough to win just some consistency in performance required. The pairs had a poor day unable to contribute to the teams points tally.

Day 3

Playing at Burnside today

Rounds 6 & 7 – A review of Section points overnight showed that Manurewa had a great chance of taking second place in the section & qualifying. Yes some results would need to go our way in other games but the section was so close that it was very likely to happen. The team were in great spirits and knew if we played to potential the possibility of qualifying was real. The fours had their bye today in the last qualifying round, they came out firing and finished qualifying with a very satisfying 4/6. In fact in round 6 our whole team rose to the occasion as we won 3 / 3; Roger dealt to the West Coast singles player 21-20 and the Pairs found some much needed form to have a strong & important win against Hawkes Bay.

Other results went in our favour as expected in Rd 6 and setup an exciting last round of qualifying.

Recipe required for Round 7 - win both Singles and Pairs (Fours had a bye) and hope that Dunedin representatives North East Valley lose 2 / 3.

Roger continued his good form and polished off the singles nicely against Hawkes Bay, Shane & Steve were unable to get on top of their Alexandra competition and Dunedin won 2 / 3 so we missed out.

David reflects on the 3 days competition

The determination of the Manurewa players to perform well was evident right to the last qualifying round were a sniff of qualifying motivated the team to play extremely well on the fantastic greens in the Canterbury region. While some of the results were disappointing the level of competition meant that playing well was not good enough and we all needed to produce something special to gain the points we needed.

An example of this was the Hastings Club side, this team had 7 of the Hawkes Bay Representative Intercentre side, they proved formidable opponents and took down some quality sides. The efforts of Roger and our Pairs side of Shane & Steve to beat them kept us in the hunt.

On reflection Wellington & Dunedin beat us in 2 of the 3 disciplines and these were the two teams that qualified from our section so we needed to turn around those results. Winning against the right sides during the scrambled draw format is important.

The team can be proud of their performance, all we ask is to have a chance of qualifying going into the last qualifying round and we did. Quality greens produce quality bowls and Canterbury turned on a great hospitality show including some very nice surfaces to play on.