Results – Champ of Champ Pairs – 3 & 4 May 2025

Browns Bay’s Lloyd Sinton took another step towards a lofty place in Bowls North Harbour’s folklore with a remarkable win in the champion of champion pairs decided at the weekend at the Waimauku club.  Sinton, who had already secured the admiration of his fellow bowlers, for his courage, tenacity and skill with his bowling arm, partnered his vastly experienced club-mate Neil Fisher to a decisive win.  In the final they beat Mairangi Bay’s Bruce McClintock and Gerhard Strydom 24-10, having earlier been just as decisive with a 23-7 win in the semi-finals over Helensville’s Carlson Barnett and Mark Preedy.

Those wins gained even more magnitude with McClintock and Strydom having earned their spot in the final with a narrow win over Riverhead’s much decorated Grant Goodwin and Gordon Smith and Barnett and Preedy also with centre titles to their name.  The exploits of Lloyd, in the past couple of seasons, have already been the stuff of legends. He is, of course, severely disabled because of mishaps in his youth, one from rugby and the other from a car accident.  Before those accidents he had been a promising rugby player, a fullback in an Auckland secondary schools team in which his team-mates included future All Blacks, and an accomplished badminton player.

Though he has come late to bowls that natural sporting talent has quickly manifested itself in his quick adaption to bowls. For quite apart from his physical handicaps his gaining of a centre title would have still been a rare feat for he is still in the one-to-five year ranks.  In the 2023-24 season he came close to a centre title, being in a Pete Sheehan-skipped Browns Bay team which made the final of the Dick Bree centre triples. That season he also made the final in the Masters 60-74 mixed pairs with another Browns Bay bowler, Lin East.

For Fisher the title was his 11th in Harbour, adding to his impressive record.

Former Black Jack Wendy Jensen and her lead Jeni Hart won the Women’s Champion of Champion Pairs title, comfortably beating Orewa’s Judy McSweeney and Valerie Taylor in the final, 24-9.  Jensen and Hart represented the Wellsford club, though each has played for a range of clubs this season, in Harbour and in Auckland. Jeni, who is a Helensville product, will play for Takapuna later in the season in the one-to-five-year champion of champion singles.  It was Jeni’s second open title this season following her win for Helensville with Barnett in the mixed 2-4-2 championship pairs and it put Wendy in sight of a third bar to her Harbour gold star.

 

In the semi-finals Wendy and Jeni had a 19-11 win over Mairangi Bay’s Elaine McClintock and Kerin Roberts, both of whom have a stack of centre titles, while McSweeney and Taylor upset Takapuna’s Robyne Walker and Anne Dorreen 17-10.

 

Meanwhile, in the national three-five finals played in Auckland at the weekend there was a grand performance from Birkenhead’s Millie Nathan, who added to her stellar season, Chad Nathan and Mark Rumble.  They made the final, only to be narrowly beaten 5-7, 2-3 by a Nelson threesome skipped by Gary Watson, son of 1990 Commonwealth Games gold medalist Marie, and with the great Val Smith at two.