Struggle for survival on the greens
Easing of lockdown will be welcomed but many ageing players will not be rushing back, writes Jim White
Pauline Latham, the MP for Mid-Derbyshire, suggested in the House of Commons during the week that were restrictions on exercise to be lifted by the Prime Minister today, there was one sport that should immediately be restarted: bowls. Across the country, she suggested, village greens could soon be filled once again with white-clad bowlers playing the game of Sir Francis Drake. Easily adapted to adhere to social-distancing advice, this, she added, is as safe a sport as any. And there are those within bowls only too keen to follow her insistence.
“We would be ready to go on Monday morning,” says Matt Hamilton, of Ilminster Bowls Club in Somerset, Bowls England’s club of the year in 2018. “Everything is prepared. We just need the green light and we could be playing again straight away.”
Bowls England’s entire national programme of leagues and cups was cancelled in March when lockdown began. But Hamilton suggests many clubs like his have spent the time since planning how to restart, with friendly competitions and internal leagues, plus working out how to conduct matches in line with Government guidelines.
“Most league games involve foursomes,” he explains. “That would obviously not be practical under the current social-distancing guidelines. But pairs can easily be played at two metres separation. Normally you can play six games simultaneously across a standard bowling green. Reduce that to three, leave a gap between games and social distancing is not a problem. We have purchased face masks for players and put hand-sanitiser units into the clubhouse. We can restart very safely.”
And for many clubs like his, any return to action, however limited in scale, cannot come soon enough.
“In normal summer months our weekly turnover would be around £4,000, much of it driven by the after-game takings,” Hamilton says. “If we are unable to open up our bar and function rooms until, say, the beginning of July, we are looking at a total loss of revenue of £60,000.
“We’ve had a business interruption grant from the Government of £25,000, a cheque from Sport England of £4,500 and we have furloughed all six of our contracted staff, so we have had support, which has been absolutely vital. But a club that has been at the centre of the community for over 100 years will struggle to be here in the same form if this continues much longer.”
There is, however, one significant issue: whatever the pressing financial need of leading clubs, for many of the sport’s regular players a rapid return to normality is not a priority. Down the road from Ilminster’s sizeable facilities, which include an indoor rink, bars and a restaurant, is the modest village club of South Petherton. Here, according to the treasurer Peter Mottram, there has not been much demand from his members for a dramatic reopening surge.
“We are a sport that appeals to the more mature members of society,” he says. “We have 60 playing regulars here and only a couple of them are youngsters. And when people in bowls say youngsters, they tend to mean anyone under 40. The problem is, for the many of us who are over 70 there is an understandable reluctance to leave the house until we can be sure the danger is over. Many of us aren’t in any hurry to start playing yet.”
Just before The Sunday Telegraph contacted him, he reveals, Mottram had been talking on the phone to a member who had been one of the club’s most active for many a season.
“He’s not only of senior years, but has three of the underlying medical conditions cited as requiring isolation measures,” he says. “He told me, whatever any possible lifting of restrictions, he will not be joining in matches for some time.”
Mottram believes such an attitude is not a local thing: it is prevalent up and down the country among the many bowls regulars who are over 70.
“If we do get the go-ahead, let’s just say it will be a steady start rather than a mad rush. Personally I think that even if we don’t get going until the beginning of July, there will still be people wanting to wait and see before coming back.”
Indeed the lockdown has brought to the surface one of the issues with which the sport has long been grappling: the ageing profile of its regulars. In some ways it has been advantageous having older, more financially secure, participants during the hiatus. At Oxford City and County Bowls Club, for instance, almost all the members waived the offer to have
‘We had 12 regulars die in one season. In a small village, that is a substantial number you need to make up’
their membership fees returned when lockdown curtailed the season.
“I think most of our members appreciate that we still have costs that need to be borne,” says the club’s Chris Lewis. “We are losing a lot of our income that comes from green fees and the takings in the bar, but the fact that the members have remained supportive has meant there will be a club for them to return to when things change.”
Nevertheless, however loyal, across the country membership has been dwindling in bowls clubs.
“We had 12 regulars die in just one season a couple of years back,” says Mottram. “In a small village, that is a substantial number you need to make up.”
Or as Hamilton, of Ilminster, puts it more starkly: “You could argue we are literally a dying sport.”
At the age of 32, Hamilton admits he is in the minority of players. Though, as he insists is demonstrated by his club’s thriving youth academy, the sport has much to offer all generations. The widespread dismissal of it as a pastime for old people, he reckons, is an image issue rather than a fundamental problem.
“Actually I think a lot of sportsminded people in their thirties and forties who might otherwise have been drawn to golf or cricket discover they can get a really competitive game here but which time-wise doesn’t consume lots of their leisure hours,” he says. “This is a sport which fits the modern lifestyle.”
For many attracted to bowls, however, it is less the chance to bowl in national competitions that draws them in so much as the opportunity of mixing with friends and neighbours.
Clubs provide a crucial community asset; players of all ages find the game an important place to enjoy companionship in the fresh air. Those involved suggest that the overwhelming majority of players, however reluctant they might be to leave their homes before the virus is subdued, remain keen to get back into the action as soon as they feel it is safe to do so.
“People are missing it terribly,” says Richard Potton, of Newport Pagnell Bowls Club in Buckinghamshire. “Our club has been part of the local social fabric since 1705. We’re on the town meadows, an incredible, picturesque scene, to bowl here is a joy. If the Prime Minister said, ‘Right, bowls can start again now’, I’d be running on to that green with a tear in my eye, desperate to get bowling again.”