Blackjacks Taste Success On First Day Of The World Bowls Championships

The New Zealand lawn bowls team, the ‘Blackjacks’ have begun their campaign with a bang at the World Bowls Championships in the Gold Coast today, winning 16 of the 18 games played on day one.

It is the biggest World Bowls Championships in history, with 44 countries competing at 13 greens spread over five different venues, all in the space of 12 days finishing on 10 September.

The competition began today with seven disciplines (women’s singles, men’s pairs, men’s triples, women’s fours, para women’s pairs, para men’s pairs and para mixed pairs) taking to the greens to play three rounds.

The Men’s Pairs team of Andrew Kelly and Tony Grantham along with the Women’s Fours team of Katelyn Inch, Val Smith, Selina Goddard and Leeane Poulson, notched their first wins without playing a bowl - courtesy of their Kenyan opponents not having arrived in the country, and thus forfeiting their matches.

The Men’s Triples team of Sheldon Bagrie-Howley, Lance Pascoe and Chris LeLievre and the Men’s Para and Women’s Para pairs teams of Mark Noble/Darron Wolland and Teri Blackbourn/Julie O’Connell, all had successful World Championship debuts with wins against Botswana, Korea and Thailand respectively.

The Women’s Singles player, Tayla Bruce won her first-round match 19-17 against a spirited Chinese opponent; and the Vision Impaired Mixed Pairs team of Kerrin Wheeler/ Colin Wheeler (Director) and Jayne Parsons/Brent Parsons (Director) started well but were unable to keep up the momentum- losing to South Africa 11-21.

The rest of 'Day One’ continued to be largely positive for the Blackjacks team, with the second round seeing only one casualty with the Para men’s pairs team losing to Japan by an agonising one point.

Round three was a similar story with only the Men’s Pairs dropping a game. A feature of this round was the Vision Impaired Mixed Pairs team of Kerrin Wheeler/ Colin Wheeler (Director) and Jayne Parsons/Brent Parsons (Director) bouncing back from defeat in the first game to beat the reigning Commonwealth Games Gold Medallists, Scotland.

Parsons is a Paralympian and has previously represented New Zealand in Para-Cycling, so the pressures at this level of competition will be no stranger to her.

Bowls New Zealand head coach, Mike Kernaghan said: “We’re really pleased with our first day at this World Championships. The Blackjacks have been training hard in the lead-up to this event and have put it all together on the greens today. The goal now is to continue this momentum into tomorrow and beyond.”

Tomorrow will see the seven disciplines again do battle on the Gold Coast Greens, with likely qualifiers for post section to emerge by the end of play.

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