Month completed: December 2007

For anyone who still thinks of lawn bowls as ‘yawn’ bowls, it’s time for a hit of news – lawn bowls is now trendy.

In fact, it’s probably been that way ever since Mick Molloy’s movie Crackerjack (if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it).

And it is ever since seeing that movie that I have been wanting to play lawn bowls. Given the movie came out in 2002, my first ever game of lawn bowls has been a while in the making.

My much awaited opportunity came last night at the Christmas party of our digital agency (thanks to Visual Jazz for putting on a great night). Melbourne Bowling Club, Australia’s oldest existing bowls club, was the setting for this goal-achieving game.

After a few practice ends (alert – technical lawn bowls term), the 2007 Visual Jazz bowls tournament started. Our team, the Fantastic Three (ironically named given we were a team of four), made it from the initial round of sixteen, down to the round of eight, and then the final four, where we bombed out in a closely-fought contest against the Howling Baboons (also ironically named, given there was not even one baboon on their team, let alone one that howled).

Nevertheless, this first attempt at lawn bowls has opened up a new-found passion for me and I can’t wait to play again.

Still questioning lawn bowl’s ‘trendy’ credentials? Check out these facts:

- You play barefoot

- Beer is at super-cheap prices

- You can bring your beer out onto the green (in fact, rather than being told that we could not bring beer onto the green, we were told that you could only bring beer onto the green!)

- You can play an entire game without having to put your beer down

- It’s pretty much as easy/hard to do left or right-handed, so you can pretend that you are ambidextrous

- You will never raise a sweat, as you exert minimal physical effort

- You can watch old people in their natural environment, and laugh at their silly clothes

- You can roll the ball down really fast and smash into other balls, which is always fun for the inner child in us all (the picture below is of me doing a very mis-directed smash, but at least my form looks OK)

Convinced now?

If so, let me know. I am totally up for another roll.