Victory claimed as weekend champs make welcome return

THE HARD-CORE still battled for their midweek open championships, but there was a victory for the workers at yesterday's annual meeting of Bowls Wanganui.
Last season's shock decision to run some women's open championship events midweek raised the ire of the workers and didn't result in the increased entries that backers of the controversial move hinted at.
Yesterday there was only a very short discussion on six remits all asking for the weekend play to return, the only passion coming from umpires delegate Eric Stewart and then the vote was 16-9 in favour of the return to weekends. Stewart based the umpires' opposition on lack of numbers, and used the situation to push for more.
"Last season we were stretched to cope if everything's played at weeks we find it very difficult to appoint competent people to everything," he said.
"Of course, that would be helped if a few of your members took up umpiring&&."
Clubs voting against the change back to weekends were: Gonville, Gonville Women's, Laird Park, St John's Hill, and Wanganui Women's all of them heavily populated by retired people.
The other contentious issue at the meeting was the "annual" attempt to change national Pathways tournament qualification from champion of champions events to open events.
Wanganui is one of very few and may be the only one in New Zealand to have this qualification.
But there was no change after the vote, a similar 16-9 count with the clubs voting for change being Aramoho, Castlecliff, Durie Hill, Ohakune, Wanganui and Waverley.
Other action from the meeting included:
1: Open centre events will have an open draw, not an arranged one.
2: In the event of all qualifying rounds for centre open events not being completed, qualifiers will have to have won at least 50 percent of the games.
3: Bowls Wanganui open events will now have the same number of ends for qualifying and post-section play.
4: Delegates meetings will be restricted to two a year.
5: All clubs will now have just one vote four clubs were against the change. Castlecliff and Aramoho provided powerful backing for the change. Voting power for this annual meeting was: One to 39 members, one vote; 40-79, two votes; 80-plus, three votes.
6: All three nominees for life membership, Laird Park's Isabel Cadogan, Wanganui Women's Shirley Cook and Durie Hill's Bruce Winterburn, were elected.
7: Selectors for the new season are the same in the men Tui Aue, Kevin Coombe, Colin Cox; while the women have two (Alton Heaslip and Roberta Jones), with power to co-opt one more if necessary.