Charles Sturt University's (CSU) lawn bowls team has won through to the gold medal match of the Australian University Games (AUG) in Adelaide to defend the national title it won last year. CSU team manager, Mr Nik Granger, said the team had won five of its seven pool games to qualify third for the play-offs behind the University of Western Australia (UWA) and the University of NSW (UNSW). “We lost to both universities in the pool stage, but we beat UNSW in the semi-final and the team is confident it can knock over UWA in the final”, he said. CSU first earned a place in the top tier of the AUG in 2009 and won a first division bronze in 2010 before taking the national title last year. Mr Granger said the past 10 years had seen a sharp increase in the standard of competition at the Games, which were now Australia’s largest annual multi-sport event. “There are Olympians, Commonwealth Games medallists, and various state and national representatives throughout the competition,” he said. “CSU will have students from our Albury-Wodonga, Wagga Wagga and Bathurst campuses competing as well as several distance education students.”