Bowls: Australia take clean sweap in trans-Tasman series

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From the start of play the men's test was a dead rubber but the women had everything to play for including stopping the Australians taking home all six trophies across both the Open and Development divisions.

Three changes were made to the Blackjacks with Angela Boyd and Katelyn Inch being rested in the women's and Paul Girdler out in the men's.

Compared to the end of the previous day the third test began in a much more positive way for the Blackjacks winning three of the four opening games.

New Zealand had good wins in both the women's pairs and fours, both teams winning by the same margin 17-14. The men's triples sneaked in 19-18 showing the fight and big points performance that had been at times lacking on the previous two days.

Even with Shannon McIlroy continuing on the top form from his singles win yesterday, he and Mike Nagy in the men's pairs went down 16-12.

With Aron Sherriff and Karen Murphy given the day off by the Australian selectors the singles matches saw new match ups in both the men's and women's. Jo Edwards played Kelsey Cottrell, the current New Zealand singles champion, and Ali Forsyth played Brett Wilkie.

In contrast to earlier in the week Ali Forsyth was back to near his best form winning convincingly 21-11. Jo Edwards however trailed from start to finish but as usual never gave up before losing 21-18. While playing well Edwards has not been at her very best during this series and she will be looking to get back to her dominating self at next week's Six Nations event.