CADNESS Cup 20 & 27 March 2026 – Contributed Article

      Bowls Orewa scored a notable quinella when the Cadness Cup men’s competition was decided at Hobsonville on Friday, with both teams in the final from that club.
       Playing as the Orewa Seagulls, Wayne Harris, Kerry Greenhalgh, Gary Wallace and Alan McQuoid crushed their club-mates, the Orewa Eagles line-up of Bruce Tatnell, Greg Yelavich John Evertse and Raymond Brown 24-8.  That followed another commanding performance in the semi-finals when the Seagulls beat an experienced Mairangi Bay line-up skipped by Ian Coombe, 30-14.

    In the other semi-final the Eagles beat Manly 24-16.
  

Birkenhead won the women’s Cadness Cup version, beating Takapuna in a close final, 18-17. The winning Birkenhead team was Wendy Jensen, Jamie Chen, Judy Smith and Jeni Hart.

    The Takapuna runners-up were Keiko Kurohara, Megan Ratcliffe, Margaret Hooker and Glenis Ryan, which gives Megan the distinction of having competed in three Cadness Cup finals in the past four years. Her latest second placing repeated a similar result in 2002 and she was the winning skip in 2023.
 In the semi-finals Birkenhead beat the Mairangi Bay Dolphins 19-12 and Takapuna was involved in another single-shot cliff-hanger against Mairangi Bay Pearls, winning 20-19.
The Pearls was a particularly strong line-up, containing three multiple centre champions in Sheryl Wellington, Jan Gledhill and Theresa Rogers.  Mairangi has been a dominant club in both men’s and women’s competitions in recent years, however this season, despite making three semi-finals, it is yet to make a final.