Bowls: Unfancied Sunnybrae pair stage major upset

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Two relatively unknown bowlers from North Harbour's Sunnybrae club with an aggregate age of 144, Barbara Butler and Diana Millbank, caused the major upset when the national women's pairs championships at Browns Bay yesterday reached the final eight.

The two 72-year-olds ousted the 2013 champions and former national representatives Canterbury's Serena Matthews and Sandra Keith 16-14.

Butler has been a useful bowler for almost 20 years and some seasons ago made the last 16 of the singles, but Millbank, who led superbly, has been playing just four years.

Her previous sport had been golf, at which the 12 handicapper had the distinction of four holes in one. So limited was her bowls knowledge she was stunned to be told afterwards that she had beaten two of New Zealand's best women's players.

"I didn't know who they were," she said. "Perhaps if I had I might have been overawed."

Millbank and Butler in today's quarter-finals will come up against another formidable pairing, in tomorrow's singles finalist Wellington's Leigh Griffin and her Nelson-based daughter Kirsten.

Other leading pairs to be eliminated included last year's champion, Ann Muir, and her new lead, Kensington club-mate Jude Ganley, the strong Auckland combination of Karen de Jongh and three-times national champion, Bev Crowe, and tomorrow's other singles finalist, Elaine McClintock and her Bay of Plenty skip, Marilyn McLeod.

In probably the most crucial match of the day de Jongh and Crowe lost narrowly to another of the more fancied line-ups, the Boyd sisters Mandy and Angela.

As well as Kirsten Griffin, another two promising younger players, Commonwealth Games representative Serana Goddard and Canterbury's Talya Bruce, also qualified.

Bruce and her provincial team-mate Sheryl Pearce had a 17-9 win over last year's singles champion, Helen King, and her lead, Birkenhead's Reen Stratford, while Goddard and her Carlton-Cornwall club-mate Karen Hema, beat Orewa's Ann Pearce and Cindy Henley.

Lindsay Knight