BNH 2-4-2 Mixed Pairs – Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 September 2025

Two of North Harbour’s most successful bowlers of recent years, David Eades, now with Browns Bay, and Theresa Rogers, of Mairangi Bay, won at the weekend the centre’s first championship title for the 2025-26 season.  In the final of the mixed pairs 2-4-2 championship at Helensville, after bowlers had to brave brutal conditions over both Saturday and Sunday, they beat Manly’s Shaun Goldsbury and Skye Renes 13-10.  In so doing Eades collected the first bar to his gold star, joining Theresa who in a comparatively short bowls career has already claimed that distinction.

In post-section play the Eades-Rogers combination was in great form, ousting last season’s winners, Carlson Barnett and Jeni Hart, formerly of Helensville but now with Birkenhead, 14-8.  Then in the semi-finals they accounted for Takapuna’s Grant Keats and Adele Ineson, but only narrowly, 12-10.

Earlier, it had also been a tight battle for the eventual champions, because having had a loss in section play to Orewa’s Allan McQuoid and Val Taylor, they only just qualified ahead of Warkworth’s Stewart and Michelle Macdonald by a one shot superior differential.

Goldsbury and Renes were unbeaten in their section, starting with a significant win over former Black Jack Wendy Jensen and her Birkenhead partner, Steve Hoeft.
They then had a one-shot quarter-final win over Manly club-mates, Helen Briant and Bradley James Luiten and in the semi-final over their former Takapuna club-mates, Brent Malcolm and Robyne Walker by another single shot margin, 10-9.  But making the final, obviously, was another notable feat for the Goldsbury-Renes pairing, as they are either just in or just out of the one-to-five junior ranks. There was disappointment, though, for Skye as the runner-up spot left her on four centre titles, one short of her gold star.

The gold star also proved tantalisingly close for Ineson, as she is another still on four centre titles. In the quarter-finals she had Keats had a comfortable win over Mairangi Bay’s Phil Chisholm and Colleen Rice, and in the other Malcolm and Walker beat Birkenhead’s Brian Wilson and Connie Mathieson 14-8.

Playing in the tournament were two major acquisitions to the centre, last season’s national singles champion Matt Berry, who has moved from the Auckland centre to Browns Bay, and Nick Thompson, a prominent Auckland player in recent years who has joined Birkenhead. But such was the competitive standard and the tough conditions neither made post-section play.

The gale-force winds, of course, did make conditions difficult and led to many top players missing the post-section rounds. Last season’s runners-up, Takapuna’s Chris Taylor and Jan Calcott, won their section but went out in the round of 16 when at the end of a long, exhausting day they were beaten by club-mates, Keats and Ineson.
Conditions were especially challenging in the section at Takapuna and among the many good bowlers who missed out qualifying there were such luminaries as Colin Rogan, Elaine McClintock, Daymon Pierson, Millie and Chad Nathan and Lisa Dickson and her partner, Kevin Rainsford.