Results – BNH Champion of Champion Fours – 20th & 21st May 2023

  • May 22, 2023

  It was doubles all round for the Birkenhead club as it dominated the Bowls North Harbour centre champion of champion fours tournament which ended with the finals at Warkworth on Sunday.

 Birkenhead not only won both men’s and women’s titles, but two of the club’s and the centre’s most consistent players of recent seasons, Daymon Pierson and Millie Nathan, marked the victories by collecting their respective gold stars.

 Daymon skipped Steve Yates, Jack Huriwai and Jimmy Heath to an exciting, extra end win in the men’s final over Takapuna’s Jeremy Brosnan, Jerry Belcher, Raymond Skoglund and Ian Hardy.

 Millie then skipped Loz Croot, Bev Rolfe and Connie  and Connie Mathieson to a 21-13 win in the women’s final over a gallant Mahurangi East four skipped by Noelene Holdsworth.

 Birkenhead thus made a clean sweep of all four fours centre titles for the season. In November John Hindmarch, Evan Thomas, Mike Haggart and Peter Nathan won the men’s championship and Millie, Loz and Connie won the women’s championship with Trish Croot their skip.

  Daymon’s previous four centre titles were in the mixed pairs in 2016 and 2021 and in the triples and fours in 2016 and 2017. Millie’s previous titles before her two this season were in 2019 in the mixed pairs with her dad, Peter, and in the champion of champion triples in 2020 and the championship pairs in 2022.

 Birkenhead could soon add to its impressive group of gold star winners for with the win on Sunday, even if a narrow one, Huriwai and Heath each have four titles and so are just one win away from the award.

 It was a near thing, though, in the men’s final, for Takapuna almost snatched what would have been a remarkable come-from-behind win. Down 4-14 after nine ends, Takapuna picked up a six on the 10thand then dominated the final five ends to leave the score 15-all after regulation time.

 Earlier Takapuna had prevailed in another cliff-hanger, needing a superb last draw bowl from skip Brosnan to pip the fancied Browns Bay four of Neil Fisher, Brian Wilson, Colin Rogan and Sean Mulholland 13-12.

 Birkenhead, which showed its class in dispatching a useful Mairangi Bay line-up 19-1 in the quarter-finals, beat Orewa’s Ray Brown, Ross Hulme, Ken Meuller and Mal Wallace 20-4 in the semis, where Takapuna had a harder battle to beat Northcote’s Shaun Bayne, Greg Taylor, Gerard Van Tilborg and Tom Edwards 16-14.

  To make the women’s final Mahurangi East’s Noelene Holdsworth, by far the most experienced player in the four with three centre titles, Christine Foster, Glenys Gibson and Pauline did well to beat Milford 24-7 and Birkenhead beat Warkworth 18-12.