New Zealand women’s bowls four – Val Smith, Tayla Bruce, Nicole Toomey and Selina Goddard – were rewarded for a strong tournament when they won the bronze medal by beating Fiji.
The New Zealanders, who had only one loss (16-13 to India in the semi-final) in their six matches, were too steady for Fiji and won 17-6.
The aggressive Fijian team had plenty of power, but the New Zealanders played some excellent positional bowls to dominate most ends.
Afterwards Smith, the skip who has had such a wonderful bowls career, said she was very proud of her teammates. “They may be younger, but I knew they were very capable and that’s been shown throughout this tournament. We’ve really developed as a team over the last 12 months or so.
“One of our strengths is our friendship. We’ve been together though various challenges and disappointments and have just got stronger.”
The men’s para pair of Mark Noble and Graham Skellern were unable to make it a double bronze medal day for New Zealand at the bowls when they were beaten 13-4 by England.
In the morning session the New Zealand women’s pair of Katelyn Inch (who made the quarter-finals of the women’s singles) and Selina Goddard (of the medal-winning women’s four) began their programme with an 18-9 win over India.
The scores were level at 9-9 after 12 ends, but the New Zealanders finished very strongly.
The women’s triple – Val Smith, Tayla Bruce and Nicole Toomey (the other three members of that women’s four) – opened with a narrow loss to India 15-11. It was level at 6-6 after nine ends, and even after 15 ends it was only 12-10 to India, but the Indians finished better.
Later in the day the triple came back to hammer Niue 31-10 to end a very long day for the three New Zealand bowlers.
Shannon McIlroy got his men’s singles campaign off to a promising start when he outplayed Mridul Borgohain of India 21-8 and the New Zealand men’s four – Tony Grantham, Andrew Kelly, Mike Galloway and Ali Forsyth – got their tournament under way by beating Jersey 22-9.
However, the para mixed pair of Gerald Brouwers and Sue Curran went down 22-8 to South Africa.
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