Fiji’s Fabulous

Fong

Fiji triumphed at the inaugural Pacific Bowls Championship held at Tweed Heads, New South Wales. The venue is known far and wide as the ”Taj Mahal” of bowling clubs, with facilities which are, simply, sumptuous. And it was a fitting background for the splendid performance of Fiji’s husband and wife team, Peter and Wil low Fong.

Peter took the gold for the men’s singles after dropping only one game to Rudi Wild, of Papua New Guinea, and then beating the hot favorite, Denis Katunarich, of Australia, in the last round.

Peter also partnered Peter Thaggard to win the bronze medal in the pairs competition.

Willow Fong, partnered by Janki Gaundar, won the bronze medal in the women’s pairs, and then went on to win the bronze in the fours with Filo O’Meagher, Miri Seru and Robin Foster.

The wins were all the more remarkable as the Australian greens run much faster than those in Fiji and the Australian home team therefore had con siderable practical advantage, as well as the benefit of playing on their own ground.

Peter Fong is the most successful bowler in Fijian his tory and a three-times Com monwealth Games competitor.

He took up the sport in 1969, five years before his wife. ”We play with the same club in Nausori (just outside Suva in Fiji), but we rarely team up,” he said. ”If we are together on the green we can’t get on at home.”

Willow agreed. ”We don’t play together because we usually have differing opinions on the game. Peter gives me plenty of advice, and plenty of telling-off. I listen sometimes but other times I’m stubborn.”

Peter Fong has won 19 singles and 11 pairs titles in Fiji and is rated very highly in world lawn bowls circles. He has been a regular competitor in regional and international events and is seldom out of the medal tallies.

Willow is a similarly good player, and although she has yet to match her husband’s remarkable collection of trophies, she, too, is rated as an exceptional international com petitor.

In the Pacific championships Australia topped the overall medal tally with New Zealand a close second. Hong Kong and Fiji won four medals each, and Canada one medal.

Tiny Wendy Maybury of Papua New Guinea, the girl with the flashing smile, was unanimously voted the personality of the games by the Australian audiences. Indeed, all the Pacific players, with their exuberance and obvious enjoy ment of the game, won the hearts, and the support, of the crowds which flocked in to see them play.

The next Pacific Games will be held in 1987 in Papua New

Guinea.

Bill and Marion

Bramwell in Tweed Heads.

Smiling faces in the Pacific Islands crowd at the bowling championships at Tweed Heads. Top: Wendy Maybury (left) and Bilu Kugame with their 10th anniversary of PNG independence badges on their shirts. Bottom: Peter and Willow Fong toast one another - in tea.