Robin Jefferson sends down a delivery during his time as one of the top bowlers in the Gisborne-East Coast centre. Photo / Paul Rickard
Robin Jefferson sends down a delivery during his time as one of the top bowlers in the Gisborne-East Coast centre. Photo / Paul Rickard
Robin Jefferson, 83, has ended his competitive days on the greens after 60 years of representative sport due to a knee injury.
He won 57 Gisborne-East Coast centre titles and was influential in raising competitiveness in the region.
Jefferson coached many players, including Shannon McIlroy, and was a prominent figure in New Zealand bowls.
The season just ended was the first since 1990 where the old lion of Gisborne-East Coast lawn bowls did not play a game.
Robin Jefferson had previously said he was retiring, but he was coaxed on to the green on the odd occasion to help out.
His leftknee betrayed him in the end and he did not play at all in the 2024-25 season.
Jefferson, 83, played representative sport for over 60 years in one code or another and by 1990 – when he came to Gisborne as a bank manager with BNZ – his competitive instincts were well honed.
Former , bowls correspondent Trevor Mills recalled a “disgruntled” local bowler ringing to complain about the new man, Jefferson.
“He thinks every bowl is a toucher,” the local bowler told Mills.
A “toucher” is a bowl that during its delivery makes contact with the jack – the smaller, white ball that serves as target. A toucher remains in play even if it ends up in the ditch, so it is marked with chalk to distinguish it from other bowls there.
“Robin’s arrival in Gisborne raised the level of competitiveness on the green,” Mills said. “His approach rubbed off on his opponents and they lifted their game.”
On four occasions, Jefferson was in the team who won the Burton Cup – Gisborne bowling’s premier competition for most of the past 115 years – and he won the centre men’s single title 10 times.
He passed the milestone of 50 centre titles in his early 70s and kept racking them up well into his eighth decade. He finished with 57 Gisborne-East Coast centre titles, to go with the two he earned in Wellington (singles and fours) and singles titles he won in Kāpiti and Wairarapa.
“My last serious game was one I never finished,” Jefferson said.
“It was a fours tournament at Tolaga Bay nearly four years ago. We got washed out and I couldn’t play when the tournament resumed because I’d injured my shoulder.
“Then I broke my arm when I tripped over going down some steps, and about two years ago I decided I’d retire from competitive play. I played a bit of social bowls for a while.”
Within the past decade, it appeared Jefferson was being groomed for a national bowls leadership role. He was made vice-president of Bowls New Zealand, a two-year commitment that often leads into the national presidency. The Taranaki centre – regarded as one of the best-organised in New Zealand – was the main supporter of his nomination.
Robin Jefferson, during his term as vice-president of Bowls New Zealand. Photo / Liam Clayton
Three weeks before the meeting where the leadership would be decided, he was told a vote would be required. The major centres had more votes and so another candidate was chosen.
But larger events kept this disappointment in perspective ... on the day of the annual general meeting where the new president was appointed, September 14, 2019, Jefferson’s wife, Mary, died at the age of 76.
They had been companions in life, as supporters of their four sports-minded sons, and in business in the Mercados Gallery and picture framing enterprise they ran for 21 years in Gladstone Rd.
“I was asked if I would stand for president again, and said no,” Jefferson said.
With a background of representative cricket and rugby in Southland, Otago and Wellington, Jefferson did not play bowls until 1979 at the age of 38. But he was already familiar with the game.
When he was 10, he would stop on his way home from school to lean on the fence of Southland’s Tuatapere Bowling Club and watch the games. He’d score them based on his assessment of the bowls delivered – good, bad or indifferent.
He started playing in Fiji, where he was sent to start a new BNZ branch. He joined the Suva Bowling Club as a social member so he, Mary and their children had a place to go to socialise.
On Sundays, they had lunch there, the children would play on a trampoline and he would watch the bowls. Often, he was asked to play, but declined.
One day a fellow worker brought in a box of bowls he wanted to sell. Robin bought them and, at 4.30pm on a Wednesday, took them to the bowling club for a half-hour “roll-up”.
He took up someone’s invitation to stay on for the night bowls from 5.30 to 7pm.
“The next night I went down there for a roll-up and a couple of fellows asked if they could join me,” Jefferson said.
He was up and running. Within months, he was in a winning four in club competition. A few weeks later he was half of the winning junior pair at Suva Bowling Club, and soon he won a club novice singles title.
In all, Jefferson won 10 national titles in Fiji, and in the 1982/83 season, he was back in New Zealand where he joined the Plimmerton and Whitby bowling clubs.
At Plimmerton, he coached players new to the game, and members of other clubs joined the sessions.
In 1987, national coaching director John Murtagh appointed him coaching director for the Wellington centre.
After the move to Gisborne, Jefferson was soon active in the bowls scene. He coached and mentored numerous players, most notably Shannon McIlroy, three days a week for two years when the future Black Jack was in his teens.
In his eight years as president of the Gisborne-East Coast centre, Jefferson promoted the game through radio and newspaper reports and the Mates’n’Bowls social bowls nights.
On the playing side, he won a national pairs title, was a New Zealand representative to the world indoor finals in the United Kingdom (in 1993) and a North Island representative.
He also represented the Wellington and – from 1990 to 2020 – Gisborne-East Coast centres and competed in national champion of champions singles tournaments and numerous national club championship finals tournaments.
In these days of diminishing club membership, Jefferson was good value, being a member of all three city bowling clubs – Gisborne, Poverty Bay and Kahutia.
He was the Gisborne-East Coast Centre player of the year in 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2021.
One of the most satisfying of his achievements was reaching the final of the 1992-93 Super Bowls national competition, largely because of the quality of the opposition.
He beat Te Karaka bowler David File in the Gisborne final, then the Thames Valley champion, Taranaki champion and New Zealand rep Brian Baldwin, the Otago representative and NZ reps Phil Skoglund Jnr (3-0) and Gary Lawson (3-1).
In the final, against NZ rep Peter Belliss, he lost 3-2.
In 1992, Jefferson and Belliss teamed up to win the New Zealand pairs title.
Jefferson also had considerable success in tournaments with prize money, usually in three-figure dollar amounts but occasionally rising to four figures.
“If you were a fulltime professional bowler, it was taxable,” he said.
“In New Zealand, most of us were amateurs. For four years we had to keep the money won at tournaments set aside in a trust account. Then Bowls New Zealand relaxed the rules and specified a trust account that enabled bowlers to maintain their amateur status.”
Jefferson has often championed practice, and plenty of it, as the key to success in bowls. It’s an adage that served him well.
Asked recently what quality would serve a young bowler best, he said, “Patience. And expect to have your ups and downs.”
