The Getagame Gazette
volume 1 no 4 December 2015

This email has been sent to those on the getagameofbowls mailing list. Join this list Hello Seasons greetings to all users of getagameofbowls.com If your club has tournaments played early in the new year it is not too late to list them. If you join the mailing list you will receive log on details for your club The premier league at Pine Rivers was again a great success, but it was disappointing that this event again missed coverage on mainstream media. It seems also that Foxtel subscribers have a famine or a feast of bowls. Twenty or more hours of bowls over four days is too much at one time, but now we will not see any bowls on television for a very long time. I wish whoever is responsible for the broadcast of the premier league could make each game shown into a one hour series which could then extend over 20 weeks Please put a link on your club website to the findaclub page from getagame Good Bowling Bob Tuck ARTICLES Mainstream Media Under-rates lawn Bowls The New Order in Lawn Bowls Six new Games for Team Practise How to Put the Stickers on Your Bowls The Mathematics Of Narrow Bowls Mainstream Media Under-rates Lawn Bowls Lawn Bowls continues to get a negative media deal On the ABC offsiders show on Sunday 24th November, Lawn Bowls finally got a mention. One of the commentators slipped in a comment about lawn Bowls having just played its premier league. His comment was made in a tone which put down our sport as he made fun of the names of the teams. The programme’s organizers did not even put in a 5 second grab of the activities at Pine Rivers This commentator, who was not identified by name in the show clearly comes from a rugby league back ground. He should look at these figures from the 2011 census regarding adult participation in sports. His sport, is lumped with ASFL and Rugby Union and total adult participation in the three sports is about the same as for bowls. The media cover for those sports would be 1000 times greater than bowls gets Top Ten Australian Organised Sports 2011 Source ABS Perspectives on Sport, Nov 2013 In addition there is almost no doubt that the Bureau’s estimate of bowls adult participation is considerably understated in the survey. This table was for participants aged 15 or more. The age groups 15-17 contributed extensively to the statistics for the ‘football sports’, but would be minimal in bowls If you look at the bowls Australia census, the 229.6 shown above is very close to the 222,000 playing members of bowls clubs in 2011. The total participant in bowls that year were 491,000, including 178,000 ‘social players, the test for that group being playing 4 or more games. (see the article below) Last week I did hear some positive mainstream media cover of our sport. Bowls legend Ian Schuback was interviewed on ABCs Adelaide local radio 891 promoting his new book 'Bowls: Unbiased and Uncensored' The New Order in Lawn Bowls Social Bowls Now Bigger Than Pennants If the trends shown in the latest Bowls Australia Census continue there will be soon be twice as many people playing regular social bowls as there are playing pennants This table is from Bowls Australia Census 2014 which makes very interesting reading These figures show that there has been a remarkable 20% increase in the numbers playing bowls over the past 5 years in spite of a 20% fall in the number of playing members of clubs The numbers playing pennant has fallen and the number playing social has increased in all states , but it is the big changes in NSW and QLD which dominate the changes. From 2010 to 2015 pennant playing numbers in NSW and Queensland fell by 50%, while in other states the fall was about 20% The social numbers in NSW and QLD increased by 350% , but only by about 30% in the other states. Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia clearly need to jump on to the bandwagon of barefoot bowls Six Games for Team Practice Training Games For Fours - Have fun practising with your rink while developing skills Your rink can be developed as a team by practising together, but because practice time is limited, playing against another four is not very productive. It is much better to play a pairs game withinn the rink, so third and skip can discuss the merits of shots and lead and second can get to know each other better The common practice of a roll up where all four stay at the one end, putting down the four bowls at one length does not provide worthwhile practice because it does not simulate a game where your bowls are played alternately and because so often the length is not varied. If players must do this they should play a scroungers type of game to make it competitive Here are a set of six pairs games which can be played by your four - they give a variety of competitive activities which most bowlers will enjoy playing for an hour or so. In all of them the length of the ends should be varied 1. Stop Fault Three Bowl Pairs Skippers and thirds do not like short bowls delivered by leads and seconds Leads and seconds are upset if their own skip or third accidentally moves the jack away from the bowls they have put on the head This game has been remarkably popular whenever I have used it In this simple game of three bowl pairs any bowl delivered by the lead which stops short of the jack is dead any bowl delivered by the skip which crosses the head is dead Scoring - normal bowls read on for five more new games How to Put the Stickers on Your Bowls State Bowling Associations are receiving many queries regarding bowls stickers following the release of the ‘Laws of the Sport of Bowls – Crystal Mark 3 rd Edition’ at the beginning of this year. Please see the photos below for a reference as to how your bowls should have adhesive stickers applied to them so they do not fully cover the Manufacturer’s Stamp and the Serial Number of your bowls read on Since there has been no requirement to have bowls regularly tested for 'normal' bowlers for about 20 years, we would hope that no officials would bureaucratically enforce these rules in other than international, state or high prizemoney games. The Mathematics of Narrow Bowls In 2007 I replaced my bowls with a set which took half of the green taken by my previous set. I decided to do a mathematical analysis of the percentage improvement in performance which might be achieved by halving the green taken. In the last eight years bowls have not got any narrower, and when purchasing new bowls you now get a choice of widths from all manufacturers. The article is still worth reading, because it appears to show that higher achieving bowlers will gain signifcantly from using the narrower bowls. (but lower achievers will also get somewhat better results) What advantage do you get by using narrower bowls? read on NEWS ABOUT GETAGAME Each time you get this newsletter would you Check that all your weekly social games are listed and make sure that the information shown is still accurate. Where social games change with the season it is best to edit them when they change Make sure that any tournaments planned by your club have been listed. 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. List Weekly Social Games at *|CLUB|* The listing of social games by clubs is a significant new feature of get a game. Listing takes only a couple of minutes and is permanent - but you must make sure the information is kept up to date . When you have completed the listing visitors can find them from a list of games on in each state on each day like this or from a 'social' link in the *|CLUB|* listing on 'find a club' Add 'Find a Club' to your Favourites The 'find a club' section of get a game provides your quickest possible means of finding the phone number and location of any club in Australia - it is well worthwhile to have that link in your favorites It also provides links to 995 clubs with web sites and 187 clubs which have a facebook page and no web site 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. 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 currently on your web page If you were not on the mailing list for previous newsletters you can see them from these links June 2015 What is a Skins Tournament The health benefits of Bowls Did Crackerjack Change the Bias of Australians About Lawn Bowls? August 2015 A Politician's View of Lawn Bowls How do you use the width of the mat to get around a bowl Lawn Bowls and YouTube - 30 coaching videos indexed October 2015 2015 Rule Change Altered Two Shots Gambling Spreads to Lawn Bowls Injuries from Lawn Bowls Profitable Singles Tournaments When did bowlers start running down the green?