Mcilroy reaches magic 400 milestone

Mcilroy won both his matches on the final day of singles play, but was still only able to finish runner-up to Northern Ireland's Gary Kelly in his group, so missed a place in the semi-finals.

His afternoon match, against Norfolk Islander Mitchell Graham was poignant, because it marked Mcilroy's 400th game for New Zealand. Appropriately, the match was played on the David Bryant Rink, named after arguably the world's greatest bowler.

Mcilroy was in charge for most of the first set but Graham came back late and levelled things at 5-5 - set tied. In the second set, Mcilroy was totally dominant and, finding some excellent touch, raced through it 7-2.

In his morning game, Mcilroy squeezed past Singapore's Harriman Yeun 8-3, 6-6. While he won the match, he took only 1.5 points from it because the second set was shared - it was level at 6-6 after the requisite seven ends had been played. That dropped half-point effectively ended Mcilroy's challenge for a medal because he could no longer catch Kelly.

Mcilroy first appeared at a Commonwealth Games for New Zealand in Delhi in 2010, when Barack Obama had recently become the US President. Since then he's represented New Zealand at the Glasgow, Gold Coast, Birmingham and now again Glasgow Games.

There's also the small matter of the five world championship medals he has in his medal collection - singles bronze in 2012, pairs bronze, singles gold and team gold in 2016 and Champion of Champion singles gold in 2018.

Mcilroy was the subject of a special celebration during the day to mark his mnilestone, and for the match against Graham wore his new '400' cap, with four stars on it, each marking 100 appearances for New Zealand.

'I'm proud of how long I've lasted in the New Zealand team,' he said. 'Sometimes it's not just about winning medals. I've been there through three decades and the game has changed such a lot in that time - the product we use, the formats, the players. To hold my spot for 20 years...I don't know if I can go for another 400, but maybe a few more anyway!'

Mcilroy said of all the major tournaments he'd played this was possibly the first in which the first two from each group did not advance to the play-offs. 'It's sort of in keeping with the shortened Games, I suppose, but for me it was unfortunate because I was on the wrong side of the ledger. It was pretty gutting to strike such consistently good form and have one loss and not be able to progress towards the semi-finals..'