Maybe you've seen lawn bowls before, if you are in one of the British Empire countries, the same sort of people that like Cricket then it's a bit more likely, but chances are you haven't.
It's a simple game in premise, like most of them are, there is a target bowl (the jack) and you have 4 bowls to roll down to it (assuming you are playing singles) get one point for each bowl closer to the jack that your oppoenent. Think Petanque or Bocce, but with less aerial throwing. Play either for a number of ends or to a score and you get a winner.
So brings us to the City of Melbourne Championship day, the finals for a competition that has bee running haphazardly for about 2 months. And this is the final, the final two people in each competition. There are three games going on here. The Mens Final, The Ladies Final and the Novice.
I should say that Lawn Bowls is not generally gendered, as it's not a strength game but rather precision it's not unusual for men and women to play against each other or in the same team. The reason this comp has men's and women's comeptitions is that there used to be two club. City of Melbourne Men's and City of Melbourne Mens but they merged some time ago.
Oh and the Novice final, for people with less that 4 years experience, and the winner was in his mid 70's becuase in Australia Lawn Bowls is largely seen as a Retired persons game, but of course that isn't that true, there is actually a mix of people involved.
And finally this is City of Melbourne Bowls club, formed in 1866 in the three or four oldest clubs in Australia - that is a insanely long time ago. It is right in the city, in Flagstaff gardens so it's this peacful little oasis amongst the sky scrapers. (That's what happen when you reserve your land 150 odd years ago) There are about 2000 lawn bowls clubs in Australia, and about 240,000 registered players, with many many more doing 'Barefoot Bowls' which is basically drinking and rolling some bowls down occassionally.
But this is much more serious than that
and
take some serious focus
and poise
But not so much that you can't play in thongs or flip-flops for you non Australians
but really this is very very serious - and they were three incredibly good games of bowls. Each took between 2.5 and 3 hours and each where a win by less than 5 points.
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