Industry news

Bowls — adapting for the next 2 000 years

Bowls, sometimes also called old man’s marbles has over years evolved from the dreary sport it was, into one that now calls people of all ages to its greens and any weekend you can see hosts of players occupying bowls greens on the many bowls clubs throughout SA.

One of the main reasons for this has been some radical changes in the way the game is played, changes that appeal to the younger set and a less conservative dogma about how bowlers should dress.

While you will still see the nurses in starched whites and the ice cream vendors in their whites on some bowls greens the trend has been more towards an exciting introduction of colour, coloured shirts and coloured bowls. Also expect some big changes in the way the game is played and its interest to outsiders soon.

There has not yet been much change in the habits of bowlers and their needs for bowls clothing and equipment, says specialist bowls clothing and equipment retailer Lorna Raubenheimer, who runs her business out of a converted cargo container at Edenvale Bowls Club in Gauteng.

Raubenheimer, who years ago took the bold step to sell only bowls goods, says her business is going well and she was happy with trading in the last year. “Of course, I know that my being there with my display of goods at bowls tournaments is a good selling point and sales from my shop have therefore been consistent.”

She travels all over Gauteng, and some other areas, to be at bowls tournaments and feels that bringing the mountain to Mohammed has seen interest in her lines grow with her presence at national, district and local events. She recently attended the Atlantic Championships at the Wanderers in Johannesburg with her trademark Bowls Shack and had a very good fortnight of trading, as players from sixteen countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean and beyond, stocked up with new bowls goods — and paid in American dollars!

She has found that white clothing — the standby of the bowls game — was still the best seller, but coloured shirts have their place, although most of these were private orders from clubs or associations who wanted distinctive colours for their teams.

In Gauteng there seems to be a return to the conservative, and to my mind, boring, black or brown coloured bowls, while the delightful pastels and primary reds, blues and yellows are not getting the support they need.

However, at the coast, and particularly in Cape Town, colour is the watchword again with the return of the exciting Super 10 competitions for U45s that began at Pollsmoor at the end of May. There coloured bowls are enjoying a good run. The vivid splashes of colour among the other dour, dark looking bowls, adds so much interest to the game, as does the now established trend of coloured clothes.

Another aspect of the change in clothing has been the introduction of peaked caps. Seldom do you see a hat on a bowls green nowadays as the vivid splash of many coloured caps takes your eye.

Changes in administration with a more realistic look at bowlers’ needs could, however, be on the cards. Moves to oppose sitting members of the national bowls board are afoot and if they are successful, one can see changes that have been needed for some time.

Expect a change in the attitude of the administration to all facets of the game, and more particularly, in the line of relaxing many of the stringent laws that preclude bowlers from expressing themselves freely; a more friendly attitude to new players of the game, and most importantly, a reaching out to members of races other than white to take the game to them and bring them into play.

This will, by its very nature, see an influx of players to the game and as the diehard group — now mostly in their late sixties and early seventies, disappear by natural attrition, imminent death lays heavily in bowlers’ minds — the number of bowlers is sure to increase and so bring even more markets to the retailers stocking bowls.

Bowls by its very nature is a personal game, but also a game where camaraderie and friendship are at the forefront. Often called the largest singles club in the world, it has been the saviour of many lonely people who have found new friends and a sense of being wanted at a bowls club, not to mention the number of partnerships and marriages formed after meeting like minded people of the opposite sex at the club.

Bowls is well, alive, and living in many countries throughout the world and the game is sure to still be around after all of us of have long been forgotten.

And the game has been around for a long time already. In the players’ manual Playing Bowls published in the year 2000, it appears to have been introduced into Britain by the Romans in 43 AD.

Interesting to note the Dictionaire Universal del Sciences and other sources indicate that the game of billiards originated from bowls. Historian Strutt, writing of billiards, says: I cannot help thinking that it started from an ancient game played with small bowls on the ground, and it was, when first instituted, the same game transferred from the ground to the table. The green cloth of the billiard table may have its origin from the green grass of the bowling green.

From 43 AD till now is a long time and bowls can surely survive another 2000 odd years.