ON THE MATS

The Poverty Bay East Coast Top 8 team who placed fourth in their division at National Inter-Provincial Championships are, back row (from left): Keith Setter, Andrew Rickard, Lois Lamont, David Lynn and Arnold Hutchins. Front: Malcolm Trowell, Kayla Trowell , Matthew Foster and Dylan Foster. Picture supplied

Poverty Bay East Coast representative top 8 team travelled to Wellington to contest Division 2 of a new National Inter-Provincial Championships.

Games of fours, singles and pairs were contested throughout the weekend, starting with one session of all three disciplines on the Friday night.

Three sessions of nine games were played on Saturday, followed by a session of three games on Sunday .

PBEC bowlers had never played 15 representative games in a weekend before.

For what is probably the smallest centre in New Zealand, the team of Keith Setter, Matthew Foster, Jay Casey, Kayla Trowell, Malcolm Trowell, Arnold Hutchins, Dylan Foster, David Lynn, Andrew Rickard (reserve) and Lois Lamont (reserve/manager) played well to record fourth out of the six teams in their division.

Their efforts included outright wins over the likes of Canterbury and Taranaki and cemented their place in Division 2.

With 33 centres playing in four divisions, their placing equated to 10th spot overall — a huge achievement.

Unfortunately the rink the mats were on  was probably the worst floor for bowls. The “sprung floor” meant bowls were falling over when someone walked past them due to floor movement, and the huge slant the floor was on meant bowlers had to push the bowl “uphill” at one end of the mat , then basically just slightly push the bowl down the other end.

This was very trying but team  members kept their composure throughout the competition .