The Flexi Lease Canterbury Women's Team showed they are amongst the top teams in New Zealand again this year. The team headed into the 2019 NZ Women's Interprovincial with four players from last year's line-up along with two players also on debut. Former Canterbury No.1 Juliana Hung recently joined the professional ranks while Catherine Bell was a late withdrawal from the team. This opened the door for Melissa Newburn to move into the playing line-up with 14 year old Jasmine Clancy gaining the valuable experience of travelling with the team in the reserve position. Maddie May at 15 years of age stepped up to the number one position showing she was ready for the challenge to compete against the country's best players. Amy Weng was elevated to number two after playing at number five in 2018, Amy had an impressive week finishing unbeaten through six rounds. Hillary O'Connor took on the added responsibility to captain the team with Catherine Bell out, she provided the strength and experience in the number three position also finishing with an unbeaten record. Olive Tapu played at number four providing great depth and experience to the lower order, with Melissa Newburn leading the team away each round in the number five position.
Canterbury's campaign started against a tough Bay of Plenty side. The matches went down to the wire but went the way of Bay of Plenty 3.5-1.5 games. The Canterbury team of Maddie May, Amy Weng, Hillary O'Connor, Olive Tapu and Mel Newburn rebounded with a dominant 4.5 - 0.5 win over Tasman, posting the all-important win and games on the scoreboard.
"All the games out here are going to be tough. That Bay of Plenty game could have gone any way. We had three games which went to the 18th," said team manager Kate Turner.
Division two, which only consisted of six teams due to Southland not competing in this years NZ Interprovincials, all had two byes which meant that Canterbury had little room for error during the round robin play.
Canterbury displayed dominant performances against Waikato with a 4-1 win before going on to beat Northland 5-0.
Canterbury knew they would have a tough battle against North Harbour in the final round robin match. "We know that they're a very good and very young team, they're really good golfers", said Canterbury Captain Hillary O'Connor. The team pushed all the way to try and secure the hotly contested semi-final berth, but North Harbour won the match narrowly 3-2.
It was a strong performance by the team overall who finished sixth overall, with Jasmine Clancy also having the opportunity to gain valuable experience at this level in their final play-off match against Wellington.
Auckland continued their dominance by etching their name for a fourth consecutive time on the trophy matching the men's teams win at the NZ Men's Interprovincial.
Click here to view the full results.
