Bowls North Harbour will have slightly adjusted management-coaching teams in its quest in the coming 2026-27 season to achieve goals that have proved frustratingly elusive in recent years.
This is to win the national inter-centre sevens titles, something which Harbour at open levels has won only once, by the men’s team in the 2005-06 season when the likes of Black Jacks and multiple national champions, Rowan Brassey and Danny O’Connor, moved from Auckland. They helped reinforce some of Harbour’s leading bowlers like Colin Rogan, John Walker and Brent Turner to form a formidable squad.
The lack of recent success has not been for the want of trying. Some of Harbour’s best coaching minds have been in charge of the men’s teams. And there have been, on paper, some extremely strong women’s teams including Blacks Jacks Selina Goddard and Wendy Jensen and multiple centre champions like Lisa Dickson and Elaine McClintock. But other than wins by the men’s one-to-eight-year development sides, a category later scrapped by Bowls New Zealand in 2017 and 2018, there has been nothing to add to that open men’s triumph of more than 20 years ago.
The tinkering with the management-selection teams has come about because of the various zonal tournaments now having open and development competitions at the same venues. That should allow an easier interchange of players from the respective squads. For the coming season, two bowlers with considerable backgrounds in the game will spearhead the campaigns, with Milford’s Charlie McDonald chief selector of both the men’s open and development teams and Takapuna’s Brett O’Riley in a similar role with the women’s.
McDonald was in charge of the men’s development team last season and will again have Birkenhead’s Peter Nathan, a centre champion in his own right and father to the promising Millie and Chad, as his chief off-sider. In recent seasons McDonald has been a dynamic president of the Milford club and has also excelled on the green, winning the centre pairs with club-mate Robbie McGrane in 2023, adding to the six he won in the Counties-Manukau centre when at the Papakura club.
Few have as impressive a CV as O’Riley has compiled both as a player and administrator. He has just finished a successful term as World Bowls president in which one of his priorities has been to stimulate the game’s global growth. He has served on centre and national boards, been chair of the Professional Bowls Association, and has filled many other roles since starting the game as a teenager in Wellington. Brett was a finalist in two national championships in the 1990s; the singles, where he met Peter Belliss, and the fours. Despite his high profile in bowls administration and in business, he remains an accomplished bowler, winning two club titles in the past season and a Harbour fours title in 2024-25 to add to his Wellington titles.
Browns Bay’s Dave Vince and Northcote’s Greg Taylor respectively will remain in charge of the men’s and women’s representative one-to-five-year teams in the coming season.
