Bowls clubs facing an uncertain wait ahead of competitive return

But Dave Wildman admits it could be 2022 before things ‘get back to normal’ in a hopefully post-pandemic landscape.

No competitive bowls has been played since September 2019. Last year the P & D League, due to start as usual at the end of April, was one of many casualties of the first national lockdown and subsequent restrictions.

Clubs were given the option of staging friendly matches, or just allowing members to play on their home facilities on a casual, socially distanced basis.

Though some competitive sport resumed in July - cricket and golf, for example - Hampshire county bowls officials followed the P & D’s lead and cancelled all their annual singles, pairs, triples and fours competitions.

Bowls England did likewise with the national competitions, which always end with a series of finals at Leamington Spa in Warwickshire.

This year, the national championships are pencilled in for between August 7-September 5 at Leamington’s Victoria Park, the venue for the 2022 Commonwealth Games bowls competitions.

As a result, Hampshire have taken entries for their annual competitions.

Fareham’s Palmerston club always hosts an annual winter indoor competition as well, but a series of national lockdowns scuppered any chance of a 2020/21 tournament.

Locally, no date has yet been set for the start of this year’s P & D Summer League, which in previous years has seen almost 30 teams and around 1,300 registered players compete in games on Friday and Wednesday evenings.

‘The situation is very unclear, that’s all I can really say,’ Wildman told The News.

‘We are totally in the hands of what the Government tell us.

‘You might get kids going back to school in mid-March but we don’t know about the rest of the restrictions.

‘We might not be able to play until the end of April or beginning of May. And if we did start we’d have to take into account the health of our bowlers.’

Wildman said if a normal P & D season wasn’t possible, one option would be to group clubs into leagues based around geography - a city league, a Havant and Waterlooville league and a Gosport and Fareham league.

That is something similar to what the Hampshire Cricket Board put in place for many of their grassroots teams in 2020, earning a lot of positive feedback.

Last summer, even when sport was allowed to resume, there were restrictions over the number of people allowed to car share.

Wildman said if such guidelines were maintained in 2021, it would create another set of potential problems.

‘Imagine 24 cars all trying to find a parking spot in some areas of Portsmouth,’ he remarked.

In 2020, local bowls clubs did what they could to facilitate friendly competition.

Wildman, on the committee at Cowplain, said: ‘A lot of clubs organised roll-ups.

‘Games were limited to pairs, otherwise social distancing would have been an issue, only one person was allowed to touch the jack, everyone provided hand sanitizers.

‘At our club you could play for two hours at a time, and there was only one toilet open.’

Clubhouses and bars - normally a healthy source of income - remained shut.

Financially, several local clubs were able to take advantage of the Government’s £10,000 grant for small businesses.

Wildman has not heard of any club folding during the pandemic, but admits clubs have no idea how their playing numbers might compare to 2019.

Bowls has a major concern, unlike many other sports, in that a large proportion of the players are elderly. During a pandemic, the spotlight is shone even more brightly on their health.

Despite the vaccination programme continuing to be rolled out at some speed, there could still be many players reluctant to return to competitive action.

There is still a chance that even those who have received the jab can pass the virus on, and the Government last month said it might take until the end of September to vaccinate all adults.

All this uncertainty has left clubs waiting to see if their membership numbers take a big hit due to the pandemic.