It may be a mix-up of codes but a touch of golf’s Ryder Cup USA versus Europe competition will be seen at the Brown’s Bay Bowling Club early in December.
North Harbour, in men’s and women’s open events, will tackle Auckland on the Brown’s Bay greens on Sunday, December 2, in the annual “Battle of the Bridge” representative match.
But instead of the traditional bowls tournament formats, this season’s “bridge battle” will follow the same competitive systems that have made the Ryder Cup such an international sporting television highlight.
As a result of moves undertaken by Harbour’s respective men’s and women’s head coaches, Wayne Wrack and Graham Dorreen, the bridge’s bragging rights will be determined by the total involvement of each’s team’s eight players.
In the first round there will be two games of fours for each gender, in the second round there will be four games of pairs and in the final round every one of each team’s eight players will be involved in singles matches.
And just as the non-playing captains do at the Ryder Cup their bowls equivalents like Wrack and Dorreen, and Auckland’s Peter Thorne and Jill Fraser will toss between each round to decide starting positions. “It’s a revolutionary format for bowls that will make the event more exciting for players and spectators,” says Wrack.
Hopefully, too, it will attract spectators galore to take advantage of Browns Bay’s excellent facilities.
Meanwhile, in early October there was an invaluable warm-up for the “Battle of the Bridge” when a “friendly” quadrangular contest was held at Brown’s Bay in which Auckland and Harbour bowlers were joined by Bay of Plenty and Northland representatives.
However, this included not only elite open grade bowlers, many of whom had won national titles, but also up-and-comers in the development stages and in the one-year to five-year bracket.
Harbour’s open men’s representative side was especially impressive, winning nine of 12 matches to be a comfortable overall winner.
The other representative line-ups had much more mixed results, with the men’s development side finishing second to Northland and the one-to-five-year juniors also finishing second, but after having the same wins and points as Auckland and being pipped only because of an inferior differential.
The women’s representatives finished fourth of four teams in the open division, but perhaps not too much should be read into that result, particularly with the Battle of the Bridge the primary target.
Dorreen, unlike some of the other teams, used the “friendly” tag of the quadrangular to experiment by mixing experienced players with those in the development and junior categories and usual playing positions were also mixed up.
In the Battle of the Bridge women’s contests there will be particular interest in how Harbour’s latest recruit from Auckland, former Commonwealth Games representative Serena Goddard, performs. She will be joined among Harbour’s eight by the likes of Elaine McClintock, Trist Croot, Wendy Jensen and Anne Dorreen, all centre stalwarts in recent years, plus the highly promising national development representative Paris Baker.
Harbour’s men’s team will be built round long serving regulars like former Black Jack Tony Grantham, David Eades and Scott Evans, and with the promising Scott Cottrell back with the centre. But they will all obviously have to be at their best with Auckland spearheaded by another former Black Jack, Jamie Hill.
