As spring nears, and with it the start of the 2024-25 bowls season, North Harbour centre officials, as well as the match committees of their affiliated clubs, spend much of their time agonising over how they can fit in every tournament on an increasingly congested calendar.
It truly is an exercise of trying to put a gallon into the proverbial pint bottle and one not helped by those who think the game’s interests are served by more events rather than fewer.
Some lateral thinking is required and in recent years Harbour officials have shown some of this by moving some competitions from the traditional season from September-May into the winter.
So, as was the case last season, the pennants competitions will be played this month on the Saturdays of 17, 24 and 31 August, with Saturday 7 September the reserve day. There will be two divisions and teams of nine will be split into three sides of triples.
Finding a slot in the programme for the pennants has proven difficult in the past, even though it has many advocates who point to how popular this format is in Australia.
But here it hasn’t been totally accepted and some see the sevens inter-club competition played on more conventional lines of singles, pairs and fours as having priority, particularly as it leads on to a national title. There has also been some bafflement that the winner in pennants is determined by the overall shots aggregate rather than the wins in each discipline.
Thus in pennants the winner can sometimes be a team which has won only one of the three games, but narrow losses in the other two can mean a superior number of shots.
A few seasons ago the pennants were played on Saturday mornings and Tony Popplewell, who has returned as the chairman of Bowls North Harbour, says he personally is inclined to return to that, and he believes this is the preference of some clubs.
However, he acknowledges the problems fitting it in and is not sure whether a return would “fly”. For the time being, though, using the winter months seems a reasonable option particularly with so many carpet greens available, and the likelihood of there being more over the next decade. Bowls is becoming more and more an all-the-year-round game.
Meanwhile, Popplewell, as well as chairing the match committee, is heading a new-look Harbour board, with recent stalwart members like Robyne Walker, Trish Croot and Mike Beretta leaving. Neil Connell and Laurie Kean remain in presidential roles and Garth Partridge continues as office manager and Raewyn Thomas as treasurer.
The board newcomers are Nigel Rattray, Greg Yelavich, Sue Rossiter and a member of both the Hobsonville and Mairangi Bay clubs, Hanaan Shawan. Like Popplewell, a former Olympic oarsman, Rattray and Yelavich have strong backgrounds in other sports. Rattray, from the thriving Hobsonville club, comes from rugby league and was manager of the Kiwis national team in 2007, and Yelavich has been one of New Zealand’s greatest pistol shooters and has a record number of Commonwealth Games medals, 12 in all.
Rossiter, now with the Milford club and previously a long-time member of Takapuna, has had a high profile as an internationally qualified umpire. So it should not be long before the new board is up to speed. And on the match committee, as well as Patridge, Popplewell has the support of such accomplished and experienced bowlers as Colin Rogan and Steve Cox.
