Online Reporter
Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
TEAM Bulawayo, comprising Dave Hulley, Kim Hulley and Jenny Schoultz are this year’s Goldberg Trips champions after a nail-biting finish that spilled into playoffs at Hillside Golf Club recently.
Runners-up, and last year’s champions, were Allen Lang, Ollie Iverson and Jan Ross.
The Goldberg Trips is an annual tournament played each July, with teams from outside the country also invited. Ten teams of three turned out for this year’s event, with Simon Goldberg as the main sponsor. The Mick Goldberg Tournament was first played in 1960 as a men’s fours event, contested by teams from across the country on rinks around Manicaland — including Odzi, Penhalonga, Mutare and Hillside — with the finals staged at Hillside. Mick passed away in 1962, but the tournament continued annually, and grew in popularity, eventually becoming one of the country’s premier bowling competitions.
Mick Goldberg was a member of the prominent Goldberg family of Leigh Ranch in the Odzi area of Manicaland. He was a keen sportsman, representing Manicaland at cricket in his younger days before taking up lawn bowls later in life. He became a proficient player and benefactor of Odzi Bowling Club.
Due to the loss of many male bowlers in the 1980s following independence, the event was changed to a men’s triples format, and in the early 2000s it was converted again to a mixed triples event to include women bowlers amid a further decline in playing numbers.
The event was traditionally sponsored by Coca-Cola. The Goldberg family, through Mick’s brother, Bennie, obtained the franchise to bottle and market Coca-Cola in Manicaland in 1950, and established the then Umtali Bottling Company, which became Mutare Bottling Company after independence in 1980.
It was therefore natural for MBC to sponsor the event from its inception, decorating venues with bright Coca-Cola branding, providing ice-cold drinks for competitors and guests, and contributing prize money.
Over the years, various CEOs at Mutare Bottling Company have been keen bowlers and instrumental in organising the event.
These include Tommy Hagan in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, ably assisted by technical director, Les Albery; Clive Borthwick in the 1990s and early 2000s; and, more recently, Allen Lang from 2013 to 2020.
The Goldberg family remains closely involved through Mick’s nephew, Simon Lawrence Goldberg, who has been guest of honour at the event for more than 30 years. Due to travel constraints in the early 2000s, the event evolved into more of a local competition rather than the national showcase it had been at its inception. It nonetheless retained its status as the premier bowling competition in Mutare and Manicaland, usually attracting the largest entry from the local community each year.
Teams are now mixed — men and women — and the competition to win and have one’s name engraved on the trophy remains fierce.
Between 2013 and 2020, the event was dominated by Theo Rodopolous, who won five times, four as skip. In 2024, the event received a major boost when Bowls Zimbabwe reinstated it on the national calendar, restoring its status as a truly national event and attracting top teams from Harare, Bulawayo and the Midlands, in addition to Manicaland’s leading sides.
In recent years the event has been dominated by Bulawayo Athletics Club teams, which won in 2024, 2025 and again in 2026.
The magnificent Victorian silver trophy was presented to Hillside Bowling Club by Mick Goldberg in 1960. The trophy was made in London in 1877 with a maker’s inscription of JHS and had originally been a horse racing trophy competed for in India.
It eventually surfaced in an upmarket silverware shop in London where Mick purchased it. The original galloping horse and jockey on the lid were replaced with a bowler delivering a wood.
In July 1996, the trophy was valued for insurance purposes at US$6 000.
