Coach’s Corner
The Flag, Muter and Provan have come to an end. I hope whether your teams won or lost you enjoyed representing your club and being with your teammates. In a couple of weeks all concerns we had, will be trivial and forgotten. We now need to start building our club, recruiting new members and chasing up those we have not seen for a while.
I want to encourage all our members to practise as often as they can, but if possible not alone. You drive absolutely nothing by putting four bowls on the jack, when on your own. All six leads in the flag, when rolling up place their bowls around the jack to the applause of the verandah members. These same members watching during the matches complain about the ability of our players. Bowls is strictly competitive, every game you play you have an opponent. Do not practise alone! I have played for the first Flag side for twenty years. I am the only member to have won twenty-one club championship trophies. You need to understand your opponents, you cannot do this on your own. Some of our members tell me they want to practise alone to fix a problem, for this you must use one of the coaches. When a coach needs help he asks another coach, so can you.
Our new coach Brian Smith has been running the Monday afternoon clinic and all members involved were really delighted to have taken part.
When the National Committee for Disabled Bowlers approached us to host their Nationals at our Club, our committee asked me to run the week long championships. The most important hurdle was markers, I needed 64 and to my surprise the lists were filled up in two days! I was worried at first – Bowlers who were blind, in wheelchairs and mentally handicapped. But everyone of you never missed a step. I would like as many of you as possible to come on a Saturday morning for an insight into umpiring for about 2 hours. Our registered umpires will each take a group and go through measuring and the basic rules. If you find it enjoyable and want to continue I will arrange an umpires course for those that are interested. This will be held at our club.
Talking of rules – we have the club rules to promote, consideration, good manners and to be courteous to our fellow bowlers. Club championship matches are played on separate greens to our Tabs games, rolling up in Mufti is only permitted after four pm on Tab greens.
The barriers protecting our banks are there for a purpose, not to be pushed aside and walked over.
– by Gerald Thompson