Bowls: Taradale to host annual clash with Aussies

Steve Hebberd enjoys his time at Bowls Taradale yesterday.

Yes there's a degree of sledging involved but not of the Dave Warner proportions in a friendship that has evolved into a transtasman bowls challenge in Hawke's Bay.

Bowls Taradale will host an annual nine-team competition between "New Zealand and Australia" at the Napier club after a group of tourists from Queensland played here this week.

"Eight teams are from Taradale and there's one combined team from the Havelock North club," said Jack Phillip last night after competing with 26 of the Sunshine Coast Travelling Bowlers.

Wanganui-born Barry Sullivan, who enticed fellow Queenslanders for a bowling mecca for several years, often starts in Auckland, then takes in the Taranaki Fours before going to his birth city but this year included Hawke's Bay.

The tourists first crossed paths with Phillip's fours at the Taranaki Fours in 2008.

"They said we were the best team they played and gave us a shirt each," Phillip explained after helping the Coasters pip the "Kiwis" here 14-13.

The following year the teams were drawn in the same section - "believe it or not we were there among 188 teams in the country".

From that sort of rivalry they forged ties, with Phillip and wife Viv reciprocating with a bowling trip to the Sunshine Coast.

Phillip has put up the Transtasman Challenge Shield through his company, AMP Bay Financial Services Hawke's Bay.

He combined with Sunshine coast's Billy Davis, Graeme Fulford (Havelock North) and Sullivan last week to make it into the final 16 of the Taranaki Fours.

"We lost to a Hawera club team," Phillip said.

Today the Coasters will have a day out in the Member's Stand at the Hawke's Bay Racing meeting in Hastings before heading to Taupo on the way to Auckland to return home.

Picton-born Steve Hebberd trained as a gallops jockey apprentice in Woodville with Syd Brown (in Sydney since 1973) before plying his trade for a little more than two years in Ashburton.

"I became too heavy," said the retired 61-year-old Coaster who packed his bags as a 23-year-old to jet off to Europe for his big OE but never accomplished his goal after deciding to meet a mate in Queensland. He built concrete tanks for 28 years.

"It's too far to go to Europe by plane but you never know," says Hebberd who has brought his son, Donald, 32, with him on the bowls excursion.

Great Bay people, food and weather sealed the final leg of the mecca.