Summer Sports - Bowls
Bowls - not fast enough, high enough, strong enough …
NOT RICH ENOUGH! T
Neville Johnson looks at how one of Britain’s most popular fine turf sports gets support from its governing body, as local authority cash dries up and the International Olympic Committee cold shoulder goes on
he game of bowls is as old as it gets. It is played all over the world. There are thousands of clubs and countless players, about 400,000 in Britain alone.
Sir Francis Drake thought it more important than the Spanish Armada. Its roots go back to the Romans and even the Ancient Egyptians. In this country it dates from the Middle Ages. Henry VIII was a big fan and there are references to it in Shakespeare. There are World Championships and Commonwealth Games Gold Medalists. Why then, as the countdown gets louder by the day for the biggest shindig in British sporting history, is it still left outside the Olympic Games arena?
Maybe grass is a factor? When you think that cricket, rugby and, until recently, golf, have long since been sidelined, the conspiracy theory gathers pace. If you think about, it there won’t be too many triples trimming the fescue with the ‘five rings’ fluttering nearby next summer. There are 302 gold medals up for grabs at the 2012 Games. Only the horsey events - oh, and football’s single gold - have any link to turf and, with respect to our equestrian friends, it certainly isn’t of the fine variety.
So called ‘Big Society’ changes,
whereby amenities are being transferred into community ownership, is a route cause. A prime example is the threat hanging over the most famous of all bowling greens, the City of Plymouth Bowling Club’s on the Hoe where the Armada was put on hold in 1588. It is owned and maintained by Plymouth City Council, which says it costs £20,000 a year to keep it in playing condition. The club and two others - Plymouth Hoe Ladies and the Visually Impaired - that play on the green have a combined income of about £5,000, so there’s a massive
A bowls visionary and batsman turned bowler. It was cricket legend W G Grace who founded the forerunner to Bowls England, the English Bowling Association in 1903 and was its first President
76 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012
“Bowls can’t even get its foot in the IOC door since there are no longer demonstration sports. Heaven knows, darts is probably above it in the pecking order”
Bowls can’t even get its foot in the IOC door since there are no longer demonstration sports. Heaven knows, darts is probably above it in the pecking order. The real problem for lawn bowls is not that there won’t be podium recognition for the world’s best next August - though that is a mysterious annoyance to many a bowler - it is that the money made available by councils for the upkeep of hundreds of clubs in towns and villages up and down the country is shrinking. Ironically, though the appeal of the game may be growing, the number of bowls greens is actually in decline.
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