Clean sweep for Canterbury in Ashburton

It was a clean sweep for the Canterbury team in the 2024 edition of the annual Canterbury vs Aorangi fixture played at Ashburton recently with the Men's, Women's, and Masters teams getting the win.

It was largely one-way traffic in the men's event with Aorangi naming a relatively young side promoting 4 u19 players into their senior team for the event. Canterbury meanwhile named a strong side which included 4 players on debut playing in the 5-8 spots with Cam Grant, Drew Butcher, Adam Winter and Aaron Neil all making their maiden Canterbury appearance. The morning round saw the team come away with 7 wins and just one defeat with Cooper Moore winning 7/6 at number 1 followed by 6/5 wins by both Reid Hilton and Sam McGill. The afternoon followed a similar pattern with 7 wins and one defeat leading to an eventual convincing 14-2 scoreline overall with all players recording a win on the day. (Pictured below Yuki Miya.)

The ladies event was also largely straightforward with 10 players doing battle in this division. This included Lannie Inoue, Shontalia William, and Eva Yin all making their Canterbury senior debut. In the morning the Canterbury women came away with 8.5 points from 10 with Lannie getting an impressive 6/5 first-up victory at the top of the order and Zaria Bourne recording a big 8/7 win at number 6. In the afternoon, Rachel Eder cruised to her second 5/3 victory of the day with Junie Chang also recording a big 7/5 win playing in the number 7 position as the team again took 8.5 points to wrap up an overall 17-3 scoreline and retain the Templer trophy.

Finally in what was perhaps predicted to be the most evenly matched division the Masters Men lived up to the billing. With 3 players on debut, Canterbury were keen to wrestle back the bragging rights having gone down the last couple of years, and would have been pleased to do just that. In the morning all three debut players in Glen Coughlan, Mike Boshoff, Kieran Sharvin all got wins alongside Jonathan Stieller to round off a perfect start at the bottom of the order. Aorangi took their share of wins through the middle however but with number 1 Andrew Green narrowly winning for Canterbury at the top this was enough to give the men a tight 6-4 advantage at the halfway point. The afternoon was also close with Aaron Forsyth getting a good 6/5 win as well as Andrew Green's 5/4 alongside a few other narrow wins meant the team again just prevailed 5.5-4.5 leading to a final team score win of 11.5-8.5. (Pictured below Andrew Green.)