Played over four days, the annual championship saw all eight Australian States and Territories pitted against one another with the competition always fierce and highly competitive.

Not without drama and experiencing the highs and lows often associated with any sport at the national level, the NSW women had to rise to the occasion to come out on top after seven grueling tests.

With every state intent on bringing down the highly fancied NSW contingent of internationally experienced players, the girls in blue had to pull out all stops in the final two games to clinch the most memorable of victories.

“We didn’t start the event as well as we all expected with South Australia beating us in a really tight game that could have gone either way,” Boddington said.

“However, we knuckled down after that with good wins against ACT, Western Australia and Northern Territory.

“Then, I don’t know what happened but we came out flat against Queensland and before we knew what had happened, they had given us a bit of a bowling lesson,” she said.

“That really left us in a pretty dicey position and we knew we would have to play at our best against Victoria and Tasmania to have a chance of defending our title.”

And play at their best they did.

 In the afternoon game against arch-rivals Victoria all 12 NSW players increased their levels of concentration and intensity, coming away with a decisive three rinks to nil win.

Coming into the last day and game of competition, five states, namely Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and NSW were all equal on game points with NSW leading slightly on ‘rink wins’.

Mathematically, three were still in with a chance of taking the title but the NSW girls left nothing to chance by white-washing the hosts, Tasmania, in an awesome display of precision bowls in somewhat tricky conditions.

“Never once did we stop believing in ourselves and that we could win overall, even after the setback against Queensland,” Boddington said.

“My teammates are all wonderful players who have individually all reached the top of the sport so there was always a feeling of confidence that we would win through in the end.

“My coach often tells me that ‘the cream always comes to the top’ and in this case he was most certainly correct.”

Although the 2014 interstate season has now finished the 21-year-old still has a full calendar of events ahead.

“I’ve still got a lot ahead of me with pennants, regional and state playoffs, the Australian Indoor Singles, the New Zealand Open and quite a few invitational events like the Silver Nugget and Black Douglas Singles,” Boddington said.

“And in amongst all of that there are all the Tuncurry club championships which I really want to support because the club’s management and members have been so good to me since arriving from the South Coast last year.”

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