Peter Hughes, the proud and delighted coach of the Sturt I women's team in the grand final win over Kensington Marryatville II in Division 2 East at Prospect Broadview on Thursday 19 March 2026, provided the following game report.
Peter Hughes's Report
Finishing third in the minor round required Sturt 1 to win all three finals to achieve promotion.
And having lost three games out of four to the top two sides during the season required us to be at our best at the right time of the year.
And we were. Our women were not daunted, in fact they relished it.
Conditions and preparation
The weather was kind at Prospect Broadview.
Before rolling up, we walked the green to observe, discuss and understand the prevailing conditions.
We established the greens were cushion like, slightly damp with minimal breeze.
So, our opening roll up bowls would need slightly extra energy and be slightly narrower than usual with very similar grass on both hands.
This prepared us to be learning from our first roll up bowl.
Leads and seconds
We place great value on our 'front end' combinations and they delivered.
Leaders Janine Skurray, Sharon Gray and Vicki Kavanagh regularly gave us strong starts. They inspired confidence.
Our seconds Lyn Witt, Terry Morgan and Bronwyn Perry built heads with the back nearly always covered.
How the game unfolded
Kensington Marryatville have a strong bowls program. Originally they were expected to play in Division 1 based on the previous years results, but that was changed.
In this, our third final, we started well and were again up after the first three ends.
We edged our way to an early lead, 5 up after seven ends and remained 5 up after fourteen.
We have become a consistently strong second half side. It happened again. We went ahead and won 57 – 42.
On the day, how did we do it?
Our thirds Cathy Stevens, Fiona Mansfield and Joanne Kirby really supported their skips with brilliant shots and some tactical advice.
Skips have the final bowls and can carry more than their fair share of the load.
Jackie Hammond had a tough day against a skip who had beaten us twice during the season.
She again took shots away from us. Jackie got close.
It was especially important that we narrowly won the last four ends, helping the side build the overall lead.
Karen Esdale's rink convincingly won all three finals (71 – 37) and were our Rink of the Day. Their opponents put in many good bowls but we were able to consistently take it away with outstanding draw bowling.
Wendy Rutten’s rink had the toughest challenge. The opposition skip had not lost a game this year. She had beaten us by 10 and 14 shots. It was an all-day battle that went down to the wire. A huge challenge to combat the opposition’s match winning ability.
After seven ends it was 5-4, after sixteen ends it was 13-12 (we had reached 13 first). After twenty ends it was 14-15.
Wendy thrived. With her last bowls of the season, down at the head, she brought it home with two magnificent pressure bowls to give her rink a 16-15 win.
Further reasons for why we succeeded
In brief. We had very purposeful two hour training sessions every week since September attended by an average of 35+ women every week.
They were very well supported throughout the season by valuable coaches Alan Catterall and Noal Mullins.
At finals time we had strong support available from Sue Kasprzak, Janet Mullins and Cheryl Saunders. We were covered for all emergencies.
On the day every player made a great contribution all day long. Quite a few played ‘blinders’.
Our spectator support was outstanding. Players were given positive reinforcement over and over again. So valuable.
Celebrations
We had planned how to win the game but we had not planned how to celebrate. Winning a premiership like this was a new sporting experience for most of our players.
On returning back to SBC our side entered the clubrooms together to a great reception from supporters immediately followed by enthusiastic singing of ‘We Are The Champions’ that Jim Trenerry had set up for us.
They then discovered how to celebrate.