Results – Champ of Champ Singles and The Grove Orewa 1-5 AC Pairs – 26th & 27th April 2025
Manly’s Kevin Rainsford finally fulfilled the potential he had shown in his junior years by winning North Harbour’s Champion of Champion Men’s Singles title under the Orewa roof on Sunday. In the final, which was switched to Orewa because of the heavy showers, he beat Browns Bay’s celebrated Colin Rogan 21-11 to win his first open title, to confirm the promise which had been evident when in 2018 he was Harbour’s one-to-five bowler of the year. Making his breakthrough win even more memorable was to achieve it against one of Harbour’s greatest ever bowlers. Indeed, the contrast between the pair was striking for had Colin won yet again it would have been his 40th centre title, so qualifying him for a seventh bar to his gold star.
In the semi-finals Rainsford beat Orewa’s Tony Clark 21-10 and Rogan beat an old and distinguished adversary in Helensville’s Bart Roberston 21-17. Earlier in the season Rainsford did offer a hint that his first centre title was not far away, as he was in the Manly four which made the final of the championship, only to be denied by a Graham Skellern-skipped Takapuna four.
Birkenhead’s Millie Nathan furthered her vintage season by winning the women’s title, beating Helensville’s Deb Presland, who won this title in 2015 as well as the pairs two seasons later, 21-16. This was Millie’s third centre title for the season, taking her overall total to eight. Earlier she was in the championship winning triples and fours teams, and, of course, before Christmas while representing Tonga she won the world champion of champions title.
In the semi-finals she beat Pauline Hill 21-6, having perhaps her toughest test in the quarter-finals where she met Mairangi Bay’s multiple centre champion, Theresa Rogers, winning a tight contest 21-18.
Presland claimed a notable scalp in her semi-final, beating former Black Jack Wendy Jensen, representing her new club, Wellsford, 21-18. Earlier Wendy had just survived her quarter-final clash with Helen Briant (Manly), 21-20.
Two of the centre’s most promising juniors, Nick Cape and Brendon McPhail, representing Birkenhead, were impressive winners of The Grove Orewa 1-5 year Any Combination Centre Pairs, which was also finished under Orewa’s roof. They comfortably won the final, 27-6, over Browns Bay’s Mark Brown and Joanne Wyatt, after accounting for another duo prominent in junior events in recent seasons, Manly’s Shaun Goldsbury and Andy Dorrance, 17-12. Though only just qualifying for post-section through a superior differential, Goldsbury and Dorrance, were in imperious form in their quarter-final over the Milford surprise packets of the recent junior singles, Hayden Wilkinson and Stacey McDonald.