Sport
3 March, 2026
Newstead holds nerve to win division three crown
The Goldfields Playing Area’s newest competition became the land of the mighty Kangaroos on Saturday, as Newstead took home the division three title in a thrilling finale against the Maryborough Highland Society 36-33.
What a difference three weeks can make.
Heading into the finals, Newstead found themselves in a perilous position. With a regular season ending draw to bottom-of-the-table Maldon, the Kangaroos tumbled out of the top two, now needing three consecutive wins to procure the holy grail.
While their season constantly sat under imminent threat, Newstead ran down the gauntlet, knocking out all their fellow finals contenders on their way to premiership glory, much to the delight of team member Graeme Lipback.
“Being a small club and obviously not having the depth of talent that other clubs have makes this very exciting,” he said.
“This team now has something they can be really proud of.
“We probably didn’t expect to see ourselves here. We were second on the ladder, and then we got bumped to third and then we started thinking, ‘oh gosh, what have we done?’
“We got through the first, and then we got through the second and started thinking we could do this.”
The consensus placed Highland as the favourites after converting their first-place finish into a Grand Final berth with a semi-final victory against Carisbrook.
However, their regular season record against Newstead painted a more evenly-matched picture, going 1-2 with all matches decided by eight shots or less after both teams won a rink each.
That trend of closely contested affairs continued into Saturday’s decider, with both teams taking control of a rink each.
After a combined 22 ends, the two sides were still deadlocked, with Newstead’s Noel Bott leading Gregory Long 14-9 while Highland’s Allan Pike held a 10-5 advantage over Angela Hill.
As the individual rink scores widened over the next fours ends in each rink, the overall tally remained mostly unchanged, as Newstead held the slimmest of leads with 12 ends to play.
Finding herself in the typically unprecedented position of still being able to dictate the Grand Final in her losing position, Hill kept fighting against a surging Pike, limiting his scoring while taking some narrow ends down the stretch.
With Hill holding Pike’s advances, Bott gave Newstead some valuable breathing room, holding Long to two shots in the last six ends.
Fresh off his preliminary final heroics that sent Newstead to the Grand Final, Bott capped off his spectacular season with a sensational shot to complete a 26-14 win over Long, meaning Pike needed a four-shot last end to force a tie.
Pike was unable to conjure the miracle end, with his 19-10 victory against Hill not enough to turn the deficit.
With the game hanging in the balance after every shot at the death, Lipback praised his team’s focus on their rinks while not being swept up by the moment.
“You can only control your bowls on the particular day and you just have to go well, whatever’s happening next door to us, we don’t care, we just have to do our bit,” he said.
