2025 Champion of Champions Event. GOLD GOLD GOLD Norfolk Island Has Another World Champion in Shae Wilson
25 September 2025
Norfolk Island has another World Gold Medal winner to brag about with Shae Wilson taking on the World and defeating them all to claim Gold at the 2025 Champion of Champions event at CluBarham.
During the past week Shae Wilson was down in CluBarham, located in Barham on the Murray River for the World Champion of Champions Championship which are held yearly in different parts of the World. Unfortunately, the male representative, Mitchell Graham had a previously booked world holiday so was unable to attend. In the Sectional play for Shae the competition was very tough, with all countries upsetting the more favoured players at times. Shae has played excellent bowls winning the majority of her games with 2 of her losses being in tie-break games. The event was played under the sets format of 2 x 7 end sets with a 3-end tie-break if required. Shae’s results were: Ireland 0-2 LOSS 6-8, 4-5; Malaysia 1-1 WIN 9-8, 4-9, 5-1; Switzerland 2-0 WIN 9-4, 7-4; Singapore 1-0 WIN 6-6, 12-3; Spain 1-1 LOSS 11-4, 2-8, 0-5; Australia 1-1 LOSS 7-5, 3-12, 1-2; India 2-0 WIN 9-3, 8-6; China 2-0 WIN 8-5, 10-2; Cook Island 1-1 WIN 6-7, 9-2, 4-0; USA 1-1 WIN 8-2, 5-8, 2-1.
Shae qualified top of her sectional play with 21 points just in front of Malaysia who was also on 21 points and Ireland who was on 18 points. In the quarter-final her opponent was Thaddaow Phandaech of Thailand and in a great game of bowls, Shae prevailed in a tie-break game 8-2, 5-8, 2-1 to set up the semi-final game against Izzie White of England on Friday morning. The other semi-final was played between Debra Joy White of New Zealand and Shauna O’Neill of Irland.
In the Semi-final against England Shae had a great tussle on her hands esp. in the first set when she was down 0-6 after just 3 ends but Shae never panicked and stuck to her draw bowls and clawed her way back into the set and claimed 3 shots on the final end to record a great 7-6 win, in the 2nd set Shae got away to a 8-1 lead after 4 ends and Izzie attempted to claw back the margin but unfortunately just fell short with Shae claiming the set 8-6, to set up the Gold Medal match.
The final was played against Debra Joy White of NZ who had just dropped the single game against Wales in Sectional play and defeated Malta and Ireland in the finals to progress to the Gold medal match. With Shae going into the match as the under-dog but with her calm demeanour and draw ability it was the NZ player who was under the pump from the 1st end with Shae getting one shot but then it was Debra who claimed 2 shots on the 2nd end and the lead. This was short lived as Shae who was drawing like a poultice closed the game out over the next three ends to have a set winning lead 9-2 with just 2 ends left to play, Debra scored a single on the 8th end which wasn’t enough and the set was won 9-3 to Shae. The 2nd set started as the first with Shae claiming the first 3 ends to set up a 6-0 lead, and with just 4 ends for Debra to claim 7 shots it proved too difficult as Shae showed the world her ability and closed out the game to win the set 8-4 and claim the GOLD Medal for herself and Norfolk Island. This is to go with her Bronze Medal from the same tournament back in Adelaide in 2019.
SHAE WILSON, WORLD GOLD MEDALIST, CHAMPION ROLE MODEL.