Bowls season options amid virus lockdown
READING all the things that continue to be written about the COVID-19 pandemic it is clear that we are unlikely to be able to run any kind of normal League programme in 2020.
As much as many would like to cling to a shred of hope that the situation is recoverable the evidence points to there being no chance whatsoever of a full, or even part normal season unless we forgo the usual championship, promotion and relegation issues.
We mustn’t write off this season just yet as there are some options open to us but they are all very different to a normal season.
All bowling clubs have been closed down by the Government directive.
Right from the early days of this pandemic the Government had indicated that they expected to enforce a 10-to-14-week lockdown for the elderly and vulnerable. They have never retracted that statement.
Taking an optimistic stance let’s say that we are allowed to resume bowling from June 1.
Assuming we can be up and running immediately then there are 18 weeks until the end of September.
I am assuming that no-one is advocating bowling into October (certainly no greenkeeper will).
Will all clubs be aware of how many of their bowlers will make themselves available to allow them to field full teams every week?
Will every green be fit enough to support a shortened fixture programme?
Only Section C of the 6-Man League with 10 teams could fit a full home and away fixture programme into that 18-week window.
As for the other 7 Sections some would say that teams could play more than one match a week to catch up.
Traditionally we have a number of teams that withdraw instantly from any team knockout competition that isn’t played on the usual Monday or Tuesday match-days.
Their greens and bowlers are committed to other leagues on those days. Is it right that they are penalised for those reasons?
We have to rule out a full league season – that boat has already sailed
This would provide 10, 11 or 13 matches depending how many teams are in your Section. Inevitably this means that half of the teams would have played more home games than their opponents.
I would suggest that this would mean that no promotion or relegation of prize money could be awarded to any team based on that imbalanced fixture programme.
The option is there to still play the set fixtures but have no promotion or relegation this year.
This is definitely a viable option.
I’ve considered a reorganisation of the 10-Man League Sections into smaller ones with less teams to allow a full home and away fixture programme to take place. Assuming all 64 current teams want to participate we could have eight Sections with eight teams in each.
That provides for a 14-week season with all teams playing every Tuesday. Any leftover Tuesdays could be used for the early rounds of the Bistro, Team KO or SubTeam KO competitions.
This option would prevent any promotion or relegation as we would revert to the current 14 or 12 team Sections for 2021 – or would we?
This smaller Section option for the 6-Man League would result in four eight-team Sections so is a possibility as well covering all 32 current teams.
There is also the option to forgo any fixtures at all and run our team knock-out competitions on the usual Monday or Tuesday matchdays. Even a July start 13-week season could accommodate the bulk of the Bistro, Team KO and Sub-Team KO competitions.
However, teams knocked out at the first hurdle would end up having only two matches all season. There could be a supplementary KO competition for first round casualties but again this is messy and would only result in one extra match for half of the teams.
We could also use any empty Mondays and Tuesdays to run our Individual and Pairs KO competitions. Personally I would very much hope that we could at least run our Rose Bowl this year as it is it’s 50th year of being contested having started life in 1971.
So still many unanswered questions and nothing can be firmed up until we have the all-clear from the Government to resume normal activity.
However, it is clear that we do have some options to have some form of competitive bowling this year but we have to rule out a normal full league season – that boat has already sailed.