Open attracts the who’s who of sport

Will Johnston 

Photo: Sky Sport rugby commentator Grant Nisbett (left) is one of many well-known sporting personailities at this year's Taranaki Open.

While the Taranaki Open attracts many of the country’s top-flight bowlers, there are familiar names outside of bowls circles.

It features many first-class rugby and cricket representatives, Olympic athletes and media pundits. 

Rugby watchers would have heard the dulcet tones of Grant Nisbett booming through the television since he called his first test match in 1984. The proud Wellingtonian is attending yet another Open. 

The Sky Sport rugby commentator, who has called over 300 All Blacks test matches, including its two Rugby World Cup wins in 2011 and 2015, first played in the Open in January 2015. 

Nisbett has a long history in bowls. He is the vice president of the Seatoun club in Wellington, where he has been a member since 1987, but this year is playing for Takapuna skipped by Simon Poppleton. 

He admits he hasn’t been able to play much given his weekend commentary commitments. 

Nisbett’s fame in bowls is the lack of back lift.

“I’ve never seen myself bowl,” he told Miles Davis on the Unbiased podcast. “I have to rely on other people to tell me this.” 

Many of Nisbett’s rugby trips to Taranaki would include traveling from the airport to the hotel, to Yarrow Stadium and back again. Now, he has a chance to see the region, where the team enjoyed day two at Stratford-Avon on Tuesday.  

Nisbett is joined by former Wairarapa Bush fullback Mark Benton. He played 115 games for the province between 1983 and 1992, before returning for seven games in 1998. He was also in the New Zealand emerging team in 1986. 

Mairangi Bay features former New Zealand Olympic rower Tony Popplewell ONZM. 

Popplewell was part of the men’s eight in the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics and finished fifth in the B grade final.

He’s since held many management positions in every New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games team since Auckland in 1990 – no wonder the gong that came in 2007. 

Grant McAuley, playing this week for a Waitara team, also represented New Zealand at rowing at the Olympics. He was in his prime in the late 1970s, attending the 1976 Montreal Olympics and soon after claimed silver and bronze medals at world championships.

A face and name more familiar locally is former Taranaki Daily News sports reporter Gordon Brown.

The current three-term councillor is used to being on sporting trips where he has covered many domestic rugby matches. He won a writing award in 1994 about Taranaki’s promotion-relegation rugby match against King Country in Te Kuiti, where he wrote the article on the train ride north.

He’s also known for his witty remarks and wrote a column about a bowls trip to Queensland in 2013 and often referenced the lunch menu in typical Brown humour, which included a “couple of Chinese dishes.”

Brown is representing the New Plymouth Bowling Club, skipped by former local firefighter Mike Wesley.

The tournament also features several first-class rugby representatives from around the country, including Jeff Bishop (West End), Trevor Symes (Hawera Park), Peter Dorreen (Far North RSA), Bernard O’Sullivan (Inglewood), Peter Belliss (Aramoho) and Allan Batley (Paritutu) just to name a few. Garry Murfitt (West End) and Trevor Keightley both refereed first-class rugby.

Of course, there are many others on the greens this week who have achieved great things across an array of sports. This is an example of some of them.