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Robert (Bob) Tuck, the originator of getagameofbowls, has recently written a book called Lawn Bowls: The Game & How To Play It Well. You can find out more about the book from this link or read part of the chapter on getting your weight here
You can buy the printed book for $24 posted or as an ebook for less than $5 on all platforms.

Find a Club Details for 1919 bowls clubs Google map & earth view Links to over 1000 web sites	Club Log On List Tournaments - free List social games - free Show sponsors- free
Playing & Coaching Solo Practice Routines Circuits for club practice Sourcing coaching aids	Running Tournaments have fun at weekly socials 20 different games better pennant draws

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Skins Tournaments - Six different games, all called skins

Using the Mat - to get around a short bowl

YouTube Coaching - 30 helpful videos, sorted by topic

2015 Rule Change - changes the way to play two shots

Singles Tournaments - bowlers like this profitable 1 day singles

The Getagame Gazette
volume 1 no 2 August 2015

A Politician's View of Lawn Bowls

Independent Senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon has accepted the role of Bowls Ambassador for South Australia

In this episode of a sports show he talks about the benefits of the sport. One of the interviewers is former basketball player and coach Phil Smyth watch video

Here is the article about equal opportunity mentioned in the video Sunday Mail opinion piece: Bowlers fight bias blocker

A bowling dilemma: How do you use the width of the mat to get around a bowl?

The Problem

A few years ago I had a problem. Most of the books on bowls I had read told me that to get around a bowl which you believe is on your draw line, you move across the mat as far as you can to the opposite side. That is a right hander moves to the left for a forehand and to the right for a backhand. As a long term coach I always taught the textbook method if an experienced bowler asked me.

My new, highly respected club coach told me this was completely wrong: you just move to the side you are bowling on. Surely there is only one correct method! read on

Lawn Bowls and YouTube

YouTube offers an enormous collection of videos of all types uploaded by people ranging from serious filmmakers to once only amateurs using their mobile phone. It is becoming widely used as for entertainment and information by millions all over the world.

There are many good and bad bowls videos - you can have a spectators view of the last end of the 2015 Australian Open Men's Fours - probably filmed with a mobile phone. click here to see it

Coaching hints appear as well as lots of videos of games. I decided to see if I could sort the coaching information into a page which made it more accessible.

My list provides more than 30 short videos on the basics of the game, but it does fall short in some areas - notably on how to develop your control of weight, with only one video which gives length of step as the main determinant. That topic is much bigger than this. Perhaps some viewer of this page would like to make a contribution in this area click here to see the coaching videos

There are some funny YouTube videos, a rap and a song. Try these

Borat learns how to play bowls

Edge Trick Shot

Lawn Bowls Through Legs Trick

A lawn bowls rap

The Bleeding Obvious - a lawn bowls song

Best of all I discovered that a remarkable range of older feature films are available free through YouTube, including Crackerjack, which I featured in the previous gggazette

A small warning - watch your downloads - free videos can cost a lot if you exceed your download limit on your web plan

News About www.getagameofbowls.com

Many Clubs are Now Using Social Games Listings

The listing of social games by clubs is a significant new feature of www.getagameofbowls.com. It was first available in the last week of may 2015. Two months later in the last week of July there are 440 social games listed from 158 clubs.

There are 1919 clubs listed on getagame (Bowls Australia says there were 1927 clubs in 2014). The 'find a club' section of get a game provides your quickest possible means of finding the phone number of any club in Australia - it is well worthwhile to have that link in your favorites

There are 995 clubs with web sites links from getagame, 187 which have a facebook page and no web site and 736 with no web presence

Each time you get this newsletter would you

Check that all your social games are listed and make sure that the information shown is still accurate. Where social games change with the season you can put this in the listing but it is better to edit them when they change

Make sure that any tournaments planned by your club have been listed.

Also list any fortnightly or monthly games in the tournaments section. If you have a sponsor for these games the sponsor can be shown. I am particularly keen to see the fortnightly and monthly games social games listed because other social games will not longer be in the lists to separate the sponsored games

If you have a weekly social game which has prizemoney and is sponsored you can still list it every week, showing the prizemoney and giving the sponsor exposure. It only takes two clicks to add each extra week after the original entry has been correctly listed

Please make an effort to put one or more links to get a game on your web site

Apart from a simple link like 'Lawn Bowls Tournaments in Australia' to the tournament listing, you can put in links to some of the other aspects of the site. The addition of the YouTube Coaching section prepared for this newsletter makes the 'Learning the Game' section much more valuable to all of your members, not only your coaches, and there is no better way to 'find a club' than to use the getagame link.

If you have tournaments listed on the site I can send you a link which will give you all of your club's tournaments in one list at the top of the page, followed by all tournaments in your state, or if it suits your web site you can have an RSS feed which lists your tournaments within your own web page - saving your webmaster a lot of time because the work you do will appear in the club web page and disappear when the game has been played.

You can also put a link in your page to the weekly social games at your club like this one for Chatswood NSW Having this link would save your webmaster the work of editing the club web page whenever you alter your social games, and in most cases supply more details about your weekly socials than is currewntly on your web page