Bowls North Harbour Men’s Division 1 Interclub 7’s
Even the most gifted thriller writer could not have scripted any better the spine-tingling climax to the North Harbour open men’s sevens championship when it concluded at Browns Bay at the weekend.
In a truly sensational final, when the result was in doubt until the last bowl of the contest, Mairangi Bay upset Birkenhead two matches to one, to complete for the club a clean sweep of Harbour’s Interclub 7’s titles this season.
For six days earlier Mairangi Bay’s women, also against Birkenhead, had won an exciting final and on the same day Mairangi also took out the any-combination division two competition. So both the Mairangi men and women’s teams will represent the centre in the national finals in Wellington next month, a remarkable feat.
In toppling the more fancied Birkenhead in the men’s final Mairangi had several heroes, Phil Chisholm and David Payne in the pairs and especially the boyish 31-year-old Michael Thomas in the singles.
For their wins, both achieved after absorbing struggles against respectively strong opponents in Daymon Pierson and David Eades and Nick Thompson, all current centre representatives, gave Mairangi the title and the triple.
Chisholm and Payne won 18-17, coming to the 18th and last end trailing 15-17, but with immaculate draw bowls securing the three shots needed for victory and surviving Pierson’s desperate attempts to disrupt the head.
Earlier it had seemed a certain win for Birkenhead. Its four of Nigel Drew, Brian Wilson, Jack Huriwai and Mark Rumble had an easy win over Leon Wech, Allan Langley, Bruce McClintock and Brian Rogers.
And Thompson looked to be headed for just as comfortable a win over Thomas, racing away to a 12-2 lead after just eight ends. But then came an astonishing recovery by Thomas, which over the last two thirds of the match restricted the talented Thompson to just four shots.
It wasn’t as if Thompson was suddenly playing badly, but on several occasions when he held one or more shots Thomas simply outdrew him and by the 18th end he had taken the lead at 15-14, an edge he maintained until the finish.
Just a sixth-year bowler, Thomas has a relatively low profile at centre level, due perhaps due to his unavailability for this season’s development representative squad and earlier his occasional appearances for the one-to-five reps.
But he is clearly a bowler of immense potential. For not only did he beat an excellent bowler like Thompson, he was chiefly responsible for Mairangi Bay’s narrow semi-final win over Orewa.
For the 21-3 margin he achieved over Wayne Harris gave Mairangi the shot differential advantage after Orewa’s Willie McIvor and Gary Wallace had drawn with Chisholm and Payne and the Bruce Tatnell-skipped four of Greg Yelavich, Bruce Hollows and Chris Bailey had won 16-14.
Thomas, indeed, had an ideal preparation for the crucial singles role, recently winning the Mairangi Bay club title with a marathon 21-20 win over Payne.
In the other semi-final Birkenhead ousted Browns Bay, with the Drew-skipped four untroubled to win over Jean Viljoen’s four and Thompson beating Matt Berry 21-14 in the singles.
Browns Bay’s only win came from the veteran pair combination of Colin Rogan and Lindsay Gilmore, who decisively beat Pierson and Eades.
The day’s drama was not confined to just the semi-finals and final. Earlier there had been a cliff-hanger between Birkenhead and Takapuna, to determine whether Takapuna would oust Orewa from the second qualifying place from section two.
Needing just a draw to qualify, Takapuna’s Graham Skellern, who was in fine form, Grant Keats, Wynne Gray and Bevan Smith, won the fours, but Simon Poppleton and Ian Hardy just missed out in the pairs.
So the outcome depended on the singles clash between two of the centre’s best bowlers, Thompson and Brent Malcolm. This was another epic clash, again decided by literally the game’s last bowl. Needing a two to draw the game, Malcolm came close but with just a single lost 18-19.