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Bowls New Zealand is pleased to announce the selected squad to represent New Zealand at the upcoming Nations Cup tournament, to be held in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia from 15-18 February 2026. This prestigious event brings together top-tier competitors from across the Asia-Pacific region. Importantly this event is being held solely on the portable rinks that were used in November 2025 at the World Cup.
The selection panel have opted to send two men’s teams to this event to give them a final opportunity at nomination for the Commonwealth Games, being held in Glasgow July/August 2026.
Debuting for the Blackjacks will be Aiden Takarua (Pt Chevalier) and Camron Horo (Rahotu).
Takarua enjoyed success throughout 2025 winning the Hong Kong Classic Singles and claiming the silver medal at the World Bowls Series final in December.
Horo had an equally successful year starting with the National Under 21 Kittyhawk Singles, earning the 2025 Emerging Player of the Year and finished off with a bronze and gold medal at the World Junior Indoor Championships.
New Zealand Silver – Men
- Singles – Shannon Mcilroy (Stoke)
- Pairs (Skip) – Ali Forsyth (Nelson)
- Pairs (Lead) – Camron Horo (Rahotu)
New Zealand Black – Men
- Singles – Aiden Takarua (Pt Chevalier)
- Pairs (Skip) – Keanu Darby (Forbury Park)
- Pairs (Lead) – Tony Grantham (Mt Albert)
New Zealand – Women
- Singles – Tayla Bruce (Burnside)
- Pairs (Skip) – Katelyn Inch (Oxford)
- Pairs (Lead) – Selina Goddard (Takapuna)
Head coach and convenor of selectors Mike Kernaghan said “our priority in KL is to ensure we get quality match experience on portable rinks which will be very similar to those expected at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. It is an important opportunity for all of the selected players to further stake a claim for inclusion in the team for Glasgow.”
What a fantastic way to begin the year!
From 2-9 January, the Summerset Nationals delivered a week of outstanding competition, brilliant shot-making, and some truly memorable moments on the green. It was wonderful to see players from across the country showcasing their skills, determination, and sportsmanship at such a high standard. We are grateful to our official photographer Barry Jordan for capturing plenty of special moments across many clubs during this time. Have a squizz at his images here.
Just as impressive were the Canterbury greens, which provided an exceptional stage for the action. The quality and consistency of the surfaces were widely admired, allowing the game to be played at its very best and reflecting the huge effort put in behind the scenes. A big thank you to everyone involved for creating conditions that matched the calibre of bowls on display.
As we roll into the heart of summer, the Nationals have set a positive tone for the season ahead and there’s plenty more to look forward to.
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Mark Cameron’s record of the Special General Meeting held 18 November 2025 at the Burnside Bowling Club is available to read here.David has received an email from David Conroy offering to run an umpires course for those who are interested. Please get back to me or Nyalla Tamati if you are interested. It would be nice to get some qualified umpires at our club.
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Well done to the EP members who have been appointed.
Development Women: Neil Buchanan
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Use of Electronic DevicesPursuant to Law 41.7, players with a hearing disability can use electronic devices to communicate with each other while on the rink of play, or with a marker in a singles game.
Electronic devices should not interrupt or interfere with any other players or disrupt the flow of the game. The electronic device must be non-intrusive to other players or officials that are present on the green at any time during a game. As a guide, the use of the device should be no more intrusive (in terms of volume) than any other conversation between players in any game.
In the interests of ensuring that hearing impaired players and their playing partners are able to enjoy their involvement in the game as much as possible, we propose that centres and clubs follow our lead by including this clause in their respective events’ Conditions of Play. The result of not including the above (or similar) to the respective events’ Conditions of Play will be that the devices are not permitted to be used.
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The following changes have been made to the 2025/26 Playing Programme after taking into consideration the submissions we received, the results of the survey, and consultation with the Programme Review Panel.
Also please note next season our development teams will now be from 0-8 years hence the Centre Singles competition will also be 0-8 Years.
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Pre-Christmas Premier Interclub.
This season there will be a Premier Men’s 3×4 Pennants and a Premier Women’s 2×4 Pennants. One team per club. There will be 12 teams in the competition split into two sections of six. The teams will play five round robin games, then play semis and finals – 1v2 and 2v1, 3v4 and 4v3, 5v6 and 6v5. The winners of these games play off for their final placings. The two bottom teams will be relegated. The regulations around clubs entering combined teams will be eased slightly for our smaller clubs. Clubs will need to apply to Bowls Canterbury outlining their intentions. This needs to be forwarded to Bowls Canterbury at least by Monday 15 September to be sanctioned. Seeding from the 2024 Pre-Christmas Interclub will be used initially when teams enter these competitions.
The other teams in these competitions will play seven rounds as in the past, starting from Division 1 to 2 to 3 and so on.
Post Christmas Premier Interclub
We are introducing the Ann Wright Shield for women. This competition will be played using the same format as the Watson Shield. One team per club. This competition starts on Saturday 17 January.
Singles Open and 0-8 Years will be played on the Friday and Sunday of Show Weekend through to the semi finals
Centre Finals will be held for all Open competitions on Saturday 13 December.
The Over 60s Pairs Finals will be held Thursday 4 and Thursday 11 December
There will be no Interclub played when we are hosting the Super Sixes which are being played at Elmwood Park and Bowls Papanui.
The Burnside Stu Buttar Pairs are being played straight after Nationals, one week earlier than in the past.
Bowls3Five Bowls New Zealand will no longer host a national Bowls3Five competition. With only 10 clubs entering teams this season it has been decided that Bowls Canterbury will remove that competition from next season’s programme. Clubs can still have it in their programme, but it will no longer be a Centre event.
Any Combination teams A/C 2×4 Pennants and A/C Eights must have at least two women or two men in each team.
Elmwood Park and St. Andrew’s College.
Each year, EPBC meets with school staff and Bowls Canterbury to discuss the programme offered to St Andrews students. The past season’s programme involved:
Just in case you think Bev and Christine have recently got taller! 
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Some interesting figures from Bowls Canterbury.
We thought these facts and figures might give a bit of an understanding of how difficult it can be finding greens.
47 clubs entered interclub post Christmas requiring 414 rinks.
It is great to have such a high number of entries, but it does put pressure on green space so a big thanks to all clubs and players for understanding the need to move some home games away from home greens.
On the first day of interclub EP had 13 rinks in use, a marvellous sight with two greens almost full.
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Why bowls deserves respect as a bolter’s sport where upsets can prevail.
This is an article from The Press written by Tony Smith.
President Neil suggested it was worthy of a reprint. It’s a good read.
OPINION: The new year is just 10 days old but it is going to be hard to topple bowls bolter Matt Berry’s national singles championship win as the people’s choice sporting moment of 2025.
Berry – who had never won an Auckland centre title or represented his province – beat newly-selected Black Jack international Keanu Darby in a tense final on Thursday.
His victory underlines the magic of bowls – one of the few sports where a club battler can topple a world champion.
Golfers and tennis players can have their off-days, but could you imagine Lydia Ko losing to a Kiwi Espirito Santo amateur? Or Cameron Norrie dropping an Auckland Caro Bowl interclub match to a battler from Birkenhead? Would Luke the Nuke Littler, the latest teen darts sensation lose to a public bar punter? 180 to one, surely.
It’s boring when the outright favourite wins every time, but upsets happen in bowls as frequently as rain squalls scud across the Kiwi summer landscape.
Peter Bellis is a deadset bowls legend. The three-time world champion wrote a book which became the Bible of Kiwi bowlers.
Yet his team, including at least one fellow former New Zealand representative, got knocked off in the 2016 national fours quarterfinals by a side skipped by a redundant Buller coalminer living in a caravan at a Christchurch camping ground.
Lionel Shaw’s four made the final, but there was no storybook finish as their dream run ended in defeat.
Berry, however, grabbed the cake, and the cherry.
No-one was tipping the self-styled “bowls gypsy’’ to go all the way after he lost his first qualifying game.
But once he hit the business end, Berry proved unbeatable. His post-section conquests included two current Black Jacks, Finnbar McGuigan and Darby, and a 21-0 whitewash of a hapless Howick rival.
The Aucklander looked imperturbable as he was interviewed on the green after his 21-17 final win by television commentator John McBeth, yet he reckoned he wasn’t as calm on the inside as the reality of his upset victory set in.
Berry said he “always thought I had it in me’’ and had used affirmation and visualisations and dipped into Bellis’ book to guide him during his giantkilling run.
Matt Berry isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, to confound the critics at a major bowls tournament.
It is not unusual to glance down the results charts and see some of the sport’s biggest names eliminated in qualifying or bowing out soon after.
That makes the sustained success of world champions like Bellis, Jo Edwards, Val Smith and Gary Lawson and the late, great Nick Unkovich and Millie Khan all the more remarkable.
Bowls deserves more credit from a Kiwi public who seem to dismiss any sport outside the Olympic Games orbit, games involving oval balls chased by 120kg behemoths or codes played in ends rather than overs.
Yet you could not get two more gripping contests than the men’s singles and women’s pairs bowls gold medal contests at Brown’s Bay on Thursday. Anyone following McBeth’s excellent Sky Sport commentary could see and feel the palpable tension.
Finals day also showed the changing face of bowls, which has come a long way from the sedate pastime indulged in by Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth Hoe when warned of the approaching Spanish Armada in 1588.
It’s no longer the preserve of the retiree, in fact it hasn’t been for ages.
Berry had to dig deep to beat a 15-year-old Selwyn College student, Liam Hill, in the singles semifinal. Darby, his grand final rival is 28, but has been playing since his grandfather took him to the Temuka bowls club for a roll-up at 12.
Henrietta Scott, 19, and Ashleigh Jeffcoat, 25, made the women’s pairs final – an event won by Jeffcoat when she was just 17. In the end they lost out to the extra experience of Olivia Bloomfield and Lisa Prideaux in a see-sawing contest.
Bowls may not be an aerobic sport, but the best bowlers have a deft touch which would be welcomed in an All Black first five-eighth and a mathematician’s grasp of equations and angles. They also have great powers of concentration and the stay-in-the-moment skills of meditation master.
Berry had to show nerves of steel to cope with the eddying emotions of going out to a 5-0 lead over Darby then seeing his Dunedin rival recover to wrest the advantage before closing the match out with some clinical deliveries in the final overs.
So bowlers deserve more wider respect. Plenty of Kiwis are darn good at it.
Lincoln University has a great sport-specific scholarship that Lawn Bowlers can apply for. The scholarship is a great opportunity, has great benefits and we highly recommend anyone that is thinking of studying at Lincoln University in Canterbury to apply. This scholarship is available to bowlers who are considered to be our up-and-coming national players. The Elite Scholarship provides up to $6,000 towards tuition fees or accommodation costs for the first year of study. Scholars are able to re-apply in subsequent years of study. In addition, the athletes also receive a comprehensive wraparound programme, which includes access to mental conditioning coaches, nutritionists, physiotherapists, and sports conditioning experts. This scholarship is also available for postgraduate students.
For more information, visit https://www.lincoln.ac.nz/…/lincoln-university-elite…/
or contact Erica: development@bowlscanterbury.co.nz
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BE PROUD OF YOUR CLUB
Learn the laws of the game and if you want to succeed practise as often as you can
and include the rolling of the jack.
Be proud of your club and protect it from gossip.
If you disapprove of some action taken by your committee tell the committee, not the world.
Support your club’s revenue making activities – the benefits will come back to you.
