Pieter Harris’ Sides Series Day 2 Report
Round 3 v New South Wales
Coming off two wins the previous day, the WA Women’s State Team went into their round three clash against defending champions NSW full of confidence. The South Burnie greens still offered very little in pace and concentration was paramount throughout all games to limit the short bowls played.
NSW grabbed an early lead in two of the rinks with only Therese Hastings, Kristina Krstic, Liz West Kelli Rogalski starting strongly with a 10-3 lead after 8 ends. By the three quarter mark all rinks were in a see saw battle with first WA closing in and then NSW again extending the lead back out. With 13 ends left across the board the aggregate was still six shots in NSW’s favour. The Hastings rink continued to carry the WA flag and went on to win 27-12. However, the Lisa Featherby rink of Pam Chalmers, Robyn Jolly and Laura Merz and the Kathy Gobbart rink of Rechelle Cole, Bianca Riseborough and Shenayde Heldt could not make any inroads into their deficits and went down 15-25 and 12-24 respectively.
The WA Men’s State Team were looking to take it up to the NSW after their recent practice matches in Sydney had shown WA that they had a lot of improvements to make. The Matt Ellul rink of Kyle McIlroy, Clive Adams and Matt Ayres again started strongly and was up 11-4 after 10 ends; keeping the WA boys in it. The rink of John Slavich, Tom Mitchell, Dave Rankin and Mark Simpson couldn’t take a trick and was soon down 5-17 and Gary Caffell, John Goddard, Daniel Patterson and Stuart Bainbridge were struggling 5-12. As the game continued to roll along, the WA men started to edge back into the game and by the 56th end drew level with their opponents and looked the likely winners. However, NSW are not the defending champions for nothing and they steadied with some big bowls when it counted and took the aggregate by two shots, 61-63. The Ellul rink had a great 24-12 win but could not get the support needed with Slavich going down 18-29 and Caffell 19-22.
Round 4 v Tasmania
With a loss in round 3, a win against the host state Tasmania was essential to keep both WA teams in calculations.
Unfortunately across the board Tasmania had a huge start and within a blink of an eye all six rinks found themselves down. After all rinks had played 7 ends, Hastings was 2-8, Gobbart 6-12, Featherby 4-10, Caffell 6-8, Ellul 6-8 and Slavich 1-8.
From that point on our Western Australian teams never looked likely and were continually trying to keep in the game. Every end that WA won was responded to by the Tasmanian team as they played all the answering bowls. While all players were giving 100%, it was a disappointing result for our teams. Eventually the Women went down 58-68 with only Kathy Gobbart grabbing a rink win 24-23, with Hastings down 20-21 and Featherby 14-24. The Ellul rink came from the clouds to earn a draw 18-18, Caffell was down 18-25 and Slavich 10-28 for an overall Men’s aggregate loss 46-71.
Pieter Harris
Men’s Head Coach
