KEY POINTS:
Auckland selectors have named a blend of youth and experience in the representative team in an attempt to turn around recent disappointing results in the Surf League at Mt Maunganui next month.
The majority of the senior members of the 13 person team come from the Mairangi Bay
club with small craft specialists Cameron Pocock, Travis Mitchell and Kevin Morrison, backed up by beach specialist Vaughan Roberts, who was dominant in the recent transtasman series against two Australian provincial teams.
Australia-based Jessica Parr is the experience in the four women named in the team with Rachel Clarke, Teneale Hatton along with Bay of Plenty beach sprint specialist Tamsyn McGarva.
The women's beach sprint and flags league competition could be one of the closest of the two-day league with Bay of Plenty's Chelsea Maples and Gisborne's Rebecca Wright favoured.
Otago have drafted women's national beach sprint champion Arna Wright (Mt Maunganui) and talented Mairangi Bay ironman Bailey Elliott.
McGarva will be a contender for Auckland after her third placing in the beach sprint at last year's national championships at Whakatane.
The important inflatable rescue boat competition falls to Muriwai's Andrew Lancaster and Ashley Matuschka, who were elevated to premier crew status just one year ago.
Rounding off the team is veteran Danny Morrison in his 10th league appearance. Morrison features as an important canoe paddler and will compete in the beach relay.
But there is a strong transtasman flavour to the teams for Lion Foundation Surf League.,
Twenty of the 96 competing surf lifesavers from eight New Zealand provinces have been based in Australia during the pre-season to take advantage of the white-hot competition there.
With athletes such as three-time national ironman champion Daniel Moodie (Hawkes Bay), sprinters Paul Cracroft-Wilson (Taranaki) and Ben Willis (Wellington) all returning for the Surf League in Mt Maunganui, the scene is set for a dramatic showdown.
Glenn Anderson, competing for the Bay of Plenty, is bidding for an extraordinary treble, having won the last two ironman titles with Gisborne (2007) and Bay of Plenty (2008).