The Bowls Development Alliance is seeking a part-time Club and Community Development Officer for the North West. For more information on this opportunity please click on this link BDA NW Job Vacancy.

The Men’s and Women’s Champion of Champions will be held at Monk Sports & Social Club, Warrington, on Saturday 30th September and Sunday 1st October respectively. Both are sure to be great days of bowling so go along and support this event if you can. A daily ticket is £10 and you can get both days for just £15. The full draw is attached below.

We are still two or three names short to run a coaching course. If you are interested please contact the County Development Officer, Ian Gill, at lancsbowlsdevelopment@gmail.com for more details.

It is hoped that we can organise a Level 1 Coaching Course locally for later this year, subject to numbers. If you are interested in undertaking the course please can you contact Ian Gill, the County Development Officer, at lancsbowlsdevelopment@gmail.com – he is putting together a list. If you have previously been in touch about a coaching course please contact Ian to confirm that you are still interested.

The Level 1 course will prepare you for coaching beginners into the sport and will be a real asset to your club. The course costs £145, half the cost of which will be met by the BCGBA. Details of the course can be found at Coach Bowls – Level 1 Qualification. If you have any queries Ian should be able to assist.

The latest BCGBA Newsletter can be viewed and downloaded below.

The winners of the main Lancashire competitions (Senior Merit, Vets Merit and Junior Merit) over the last 10 years have now been added to this website and can be viewed under Competitions – Previous Winners – then there is a page for each one. See the drop down menu. In due course we hope to go back a bit further.

The Bowls Development Alliance’s latest Safeguarding Bulletin can be viewed below. For further information on safeguarding and links to the templates and previous bulletins on the BDA’s website visit the Safeguarding page on this website.

Paul Naylor, the Lead Practitioner for Inclusion and Pupil Welfare at Gaskell Community Primary School in Bolton has been in touch to let us know about the work that has been going on with schools in the local area. He writes:

We held a Year 5 festival – plenty of friendly matches and a Year 4 Competition for trophies and prizes. 

For the Y4’s this has been the end of a programme that started indoors in March and then ran weekly outdoors through the summer. Next year we can add a Y6 festival for those who bowled this year. The Y4 competition was umpired brilliantly by Y5 pupils from last years bowling programme. 

We had 2 greens going at Darbishire Park, Bolton. One was traditional wooden bowls and the other was using New Age Bowls. 

The veterans team who came down to watch and give advice were very impressed with the standard of play and the green etiquette shown by the pupils.”

Paul is doing some fantastic work with the schools in the area to promote crown green bowls to young people. Hopefully we will be looking at plans for an indoor inter-district tournament early next year given that West Lancashire and South Ribble Schools have been getting involved in bowls this year.

Are you doing any interesting work with schools that you can let us know about? Have you been successful in gaining a grant or in attracting new members? Please let us know so that we can publicise what you are doing and help other clubs. Contact us at lancsbowlsdeveloping@gmail.com.

Congratulations to Billy Speed who won the 2023 (and 2022) Lancashire Senior Merit. Also to Duncan Watkins who won the 2023 (and 2022) Lancashire Veteran’s Merit title. They are pictured below with their trophies.

Congratulations to Alfie Catterall (Up Holland BC) who won the Lancashire Junior Merit, and to the runner up Matthew Finch (Skelmersdale Park & Ormskirk BCs). Both will go forward to represent Lancashire at the Junior Merit final. This will be held at Essington BC, Staffordshire on Saturday 19th August.