Two of North Harbour’s most popular bowlers, Birkenhead’s Millie Nathan and Browns Bay’s Lloyd Sinton, enhanced their already considerable reputations and playing CVs with wins in the centre’s two championship events decided at the weekend.
Millie, in what has been a relatively short career, gained her 12th centre title by winning the women’s singles championship, beating her triples partner, and a previous winner of this title on four occasions, Takapuna’s Lisa Dickson, 21-19 in Sunday’s final at the Milford club.
And Lloyd partnered the accomplished Neil Fisher to a 22-12 win over Takapuna’s Wynne Gray and Bevan Smith in the final of the men’s pairs championship. This repeated the feat of Lloyd and Fisher earlier this year when they won the champion of champion pairs title.
Already, Lloyd has become something of a Harbour legend. Quite apart from the fact he is severely disabled from a teenage rugby injury and later a serious car accident he has been playing only a short time and is still a one-to-five-year bowler, and adding to the significance of his weekend’s win was the fact that to make the final, he and Fisher, in the semi-finals, had to overcome Browns Bay’s most distinguished bowlers John Walker and Colin Rogan, who between them have around 70 centre titles and, of course, the men with whom Fisher has achieved much of his Harbour success in the recent years.
The final, their fourth match in a long, tiring, hot day, proved a step too far for Gray and Smith and for Gray was the second time he has been runner-up in a centre event for he was in a triple beaten by none other than Rogan, Walker and Fisher a few seasons ago. But until the final, the Takapuna pair had provided much to an absorbing day of quality bowls. They only just survived their early morning round of 16 clash with Orewa’s Ian Carroll and Daniel Chivers, having to go to an extra end after the scores had been tied when the bell went. Orewa had been holding the game with two shots on the jack, only for Gray to remove one with an accurate run shot and then on the extra end, with Orewa again holding game, Gray played a brilliant draw bowl to snatch the win.
In contrast to this heartstopper, Gray and Smith won both their quarter-final and semi-final against talented opponents with surprising ease. In the quarter-final they beat Birkenhead’s Jack Huriwai and Jimmy Heath, each with four centre titles to their credit and close to gold stars, 22-2 and in the semi-final, Warkworth’s Duncan Rhind and Scott Wilson, both of whom have played at representative levels for the Northland centre, 20-3.
To make the semi-finals Rhind and Wilson achieved some notable scalps, Birkenhead’s Brian Wilson and Evan Thomas and then Manly’s Keith Benson and Shaun Goldsbury.
The women’s singles was a cut-throat affair, with the blind draw producing what are sometimes called the “pool of death,” One of the qualifying sections comprised a recent national singles champion and recent Blackjack in Leeane Poulson, who has just joined Takapuna, another former Blackjack Wendy Jensen and multiple centre champion Elaine McClintock. Elaine did extremely well to win this section unbeaten even though all her wins were by close margins. She then drew Millie in the semi-finals, her gruelling campaign taking its toll with a 21-7 defeat. In her section Millie also faced a formidable obstacle, Mairangi Bay’s Theresa Rogers, winner of this title last season. Millie prevailed in this clash 21-14.
Lisa Dickson also had an exacting draw, her first match which ended 18-10 in her favour was against the 2022-23 winner of this event, Skye Renes, now with the Manly club. She then had a tough quarter-final against her Takapuna club-mate and her pairs partner, Lauren Mills. This was a game of high quality and Lauren, for the most part, with some precise draw bowls, looked to have the edge. But the momentum shifted when on the 15th end, Lisa picked up a maximum four from which she went on to win 17-15. The final between Millie and Lisa was another high quality match, with both playing well.
