The 2020 lawn bowling season opened in Cobourg on July 12th!
I hope I never have to type a sentence like that again! And to paraphrase the famous Star Trek quote, "It’s bowling Jim but not as we know it."
Anyway the important point is that the greens are open for pre-booked members and we can actually roll a few bowls, even though it’s just practice. And who amongst us doesn’t need some practice?
After the first week nineteen members have ventured out, some more than once. Two metre distancing is the norm and, at the time of writing, a maximum of ten members at a time. As well as bowling there has been an opportunity to catch up with friends who we haven’t seen for a while and there have been a number of “fence leaners” asking what we are doing. The neighbours are also pleased to see us back. One said that they miss us “hooting and hollering on a Tuesday night”. Who said bowling is a sedate sport?
Quite a few "likes" on Twitter as well. I think it's fair to say that people in Cobourg like to see us out there on the greens.
The arrangements are working well and, as we have previously said, they are there for our protection so no apologies if we appear to be acting strictly. Our record keeping also has to be accurate which is why only pre-booking is allowed. If anything should go wrong we need to have records showing who was bowling at any given time.
A word of thanks to the Safety Officers. (Donna Ball, Mary Thibault, Nan Hendren, Helen Beaton, Carol Dewey and Louisa Arthur). Without them you would not be bowling.
At the first session the greens were a little slow and after such a long time without bowling there were quite a few bowls falling short of, or around, the hog line. However, verticutting after the first session and cutting every second day has resulted in them getting a bit faster and the members I have watched seem to be getting back in the groove pretty quickly.
Today, Friday, another verticut was done, a double cut was done and the green was rolled. I can testify that the greens are definitely faster now.
My personal report is that I rolled one bowl all the way into the ditch (so it’s not that slow) and threw one wrong bias. Modesty prevents me telling you that I was quite pleased with my own performance. (An old country song springs to mind – “Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way”)
What’s next I hear you ask now that the Ontario Government has announced that in our area we can move to Stage 3? Stage 3 does allow for team competition that does not involve close contact and the OLBA Board is considering what that means for lawn bowling.
I did not think I would be saying this a few weeks ago but maybe we will be able to arrange some jitneys before too long. Now, that would be more like bowls as we know it.
In other news our President Nancy Fargo had her knee replacement operation on Thursday and she tells me that it went well.
Finally, please check out an interview that Baylee van Steijn did with Jeff Gard this week. Jeff, as some of you will recall, was the Sports Editor of Northumberland Today and was a big help to the club in publishing weekly bowling reports which I sent to him. He has now started up his own Sports Media business. Here is the link to his interview with Baylee.
https://jgsportsmedia.com/2020/07/17/audio-interview-with-lawn-bowler-baylee-van-steijn/
Take care, stay safe and good bowling
Bill Arthur
