TENPIN BOWLING: Aussie Joe stays in the Bay frame

ANENDRA SINGH
It was 1962 and Sydneysider Joe McCardell was beginning to embrace the joys of life.
Having had enough of the weekly dose of bashing on the B grade rugby league scene for his champion Ryde club the previous season, the 23-year-old was keen to get into a non-contact sport.
Luckily for McCardell, the tenpin bowling craze had just hit the suburbs of the metropolitan city in Australia as the well-oiled but congested lanes beckoned him from his life in the fast lane.
"We sometimes had to wait for three hours to play but it was good fun," McCardell, 69, of Hastings, tells SportToday.
"It was an easy choice (to play tenpin bowling over rugby league). The only time you could hurt yourself is if you drop the ball on your foot," he says, although the excruciating pain Mr Goldstein endures in the ASB Bank advertisement on telly while standing behind his boss paints an exaggerated picture.
Working as a foreman in a factory that manufactured "the lolly with a hole" (Lifesavers), for a younger McCardell life seemed complete when he married Hastings lass, Wallis Pocock, who worked as a packer in the same factory.
But simply bowling over to an alley to knock over some pins became a challenge when the newlywed McCardells emigrated to Hastings in 1962. With no bowling alleys in Hawke's Bay, he had to travel around the North Island to play. He often did with a fortitude that earned him a berth with the Hawke's Bay team for the inter-regionals from 1970 to 1982.
However, one can only imagine the relief for the Richmonds Pacific meat processing worker when a bowling alley finally opened in the Napier industrial area of Onekawa, along Niven Street, in 1987.
A year later a rival and slicker Super Strike Tenpin Bowling Centre mushroomed in the Hastings industrial area of Omahu, eclipsing the Napier establishment.
"The Hastings facility was much better. They closed the Napier one down and carted the lanes to Blenheim," McCardell recalls.
Tenpin was so popular, according to him, that people were on the weekly Robbie Burns League waiting list.
McCardell was quick off the blocks, forming a Pacific Strikers side in 1988, comprising workmates Graham Hellyer, Bob Bailey, Murray Ennor and Gary Williams, to compete in a 10-team competition.
In 1991, McCardell won the A grade singles title in Palmerston North but found it difficult over the years to make a dent at nationals against the stronger Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland outfits.
With a handicap system similar to golf, McCardell is currently on an 18 handicap but at his peak he teetered around the 13 mark. While he did not attain the distinction of a scratch bowler, the Aussie fondly recalls Koio Shannon, of Tauranga, scoring a perfect 300 in a competition several years ago.
"It gives you a buzz when you have six strikes. That's when you start to have colly wobbles (nerves) just like a cricketer does sitting in the'90s while batting," explains McCardell, whose top score is 267.
Today he will be in the Twin City Tenpin Trophy Challenge Series at the Hastings centre.
Wife Wallis played tenpin with him until 1990, when arthritis of the knuckles put paid to that.
"She's a swim gym-holic and she may now be a tenpin widow but she still supports me whenever she can."
When he came from Sydney he brought his then spivvy bowling balls, which he has kept to this day.
"In those days it was a choice of black and black but today you can get red, green and sparkling ones, and even computer-balanced ones," says the man who is "proud to be an Ocker and will always be one", after obtaining a new passport last week.