Blackjacks In Medal Contention At World Championships

30 August

The Blackjacks have continued their strong form on Day Two of the World Bowls Championships on the Gold Coast.

Seven disciplines (women’s singles, men’s pairs, men’s triples, women’s fours, para women’s pairs, para men’s pairs and para mixed pairs) are contested over week one, and day two has seen more wins on the board for New Zealand with the Blackjacks winning 11 of their 17 games today.

This event is the biggest World Bowls Championships in history, with 44 countries competing at 13 greens spread over five different venues. The teams in contention for medals will be known tomorrow, with most requiring a ‘top two’ finish in their sections to progress to post section play.

The two exceptions are the women’s Para pairs and the vision-impaired mixed team, who need to finish in the top four of their sections to progress to the semifinals.

With a loss this morning against Australia, but a strong win this afternoon against Scotland, the women’s Para pairs team of Teri Blackbourn and Julie O’Connell have guaranteed themselves a top-four finish, and a semifinal berth. All that is left to be decided is who they will play, which will be known after the final game of section tomorrow.

The men’s Para team of Mark Noble and Darron Wolland have been battling hard, and are still in with a chance of qualifying for post-section tomorrow, if they win their final game and other results fall their way.

Mark Noble summed up their feelings going into tomorrow saying: “Tomorrow we play Scotland, the current Commonwealth Games champions. Clearly, we have to win that one and we require South Africa to beat Singapore which could potentially happen.

“All we can do is win our game and see what happens. That’s the main thing – sort your life out before you worry about the others.”

The women’s fours of Katelyn Inch, Val Smith, Selina Goddard and Leeane Poulson has been in scintillating form so far, having won all of their games.

This has guaranteed them a top-two finish in their section, and a place in the quarterfinals later this week.

The hugely experience Val Smith, who has over 600 caps for New Zealand, said: “In the game this afternoon we went through a patch where we drifted off and probably were a bit hard on ourselves which doesn’t help.

“Katelyn picked that up and had a word with us and we looked more positively and managed to get it together again.

“The greens are running very different to what we trained on. They had a lot of dry weather and now we have had a couple of day with showers which slows the greens quite dramatically.”

The women’s singles player, Tayla Bruce still has three games to play tomorrow, and is well and truly in contention for a top-two finish, winning all six games, with strong wins today over Switzerland, USA and Malaysia. She leads her section, and with games against Singapore and Samoa tomorrow, is favoured to qualify for the quarterfinals.

The men’s pair of Andrew Kelly and Tony Grantham lost one game yesterday, but bounced back to beat Turkiye and ground out a 16-16 draw against Canada. In their third game, they had a resounding win against a powerhouse English pair with three wins tomorrow over Namibia, Fiji and Japan likely to provide a qualifying spot in post-section.

The men’s triples team of Sheldon Bagrie-Howley, Lance Pascoe and Chris LeLievre picked up where they left off this morning, crushing Papua New Guinea. Their round two matchup against a strong Irish team was arguably the game of the round, with the New Zealand combination 17-15.

They also ;ost their final game of the round but with three games remaining tomorrow, the door is still wide open for a top-two finish to advance to the playoffs.

The vision impaired mixed pairs team of Kerrin Wheeler/ Colin Wheeler (Director) and Jayne Parsons/Brent Parsons (Director), needing a top-four finish in their section, are currently in sixth with one game tomorrow. If they can win this game, they have chance to leapfrog into fourth position and qualify for the semifinals.

With all section play of the first half of the competition to conclude tomorrow, the Blackjacks squad are sitting in a prime position to contest a number of medal matches over the coming days.

Full results available here.

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