Page 30 - Spring 2012

Blue Carpet:Layout 1 17/05/2012 09:31 Page 1

30 WHY SHOULD BOWLS CARPETS BE GREEN?
WHY SHOULD BOWLS CARPETS BE GREEN?
This topic has raised its head as Blue bowls carpets are
being produced By Dale Sports. When Short Mat Bowls
came about, green was the natural colour as this mim-
icked the colour of grass. However, Short mat bowls has
now taken on a life of its own since its beginning and
has become a sport in its own life.
Blue carpets are now seen in long mat bowls on
TV. Dale Sports offer a Blue carpet in a Verde top sur-
face. At the moment our rules state that carpets must be
green, although this only covers leagues and competitions etc. and at least one club is getting
a blue carpet just for internal club use.
You can now of course get coloured delivery mats
the familiar “yellow” one is of course used everywhere
but I have seen black and Thomas Taylor offers Blue
and red as well. No doubt someone will splutter you
can’t have a blue delivery mat or a blue bowl on a Blue
carpet but that’s commonsense, which of course is not
very common.
My dislike of boring grey and white in clothing is
well known and I’m glad that much more colour has come into our dress. Coloured bowls are
certainly growing in popularity and many more are now
seen on the carpets around the country but the question
still remains, why should carpets be green?
I know the luddites will howl in protest but we have
still to drag our sport into the 20th century, let alone the
21st. If we took the view that things shouldn’t change
then we would still have men with flags walking in front
of cars. I do not want to throw the baby out with the bath-
water but what is the matter with blue or other colours?
Black and some other colours are obviously out but what about a nice rich red or brown etc. So
what do you think?

WHY IS OUR SPORT SO PUBLICITY SHY?

I have of course been banging about more stuff for the maga-
Let us shout to the zine since it was started in 1992! Gosh, when I typed that in a

World how good was a bit stunned and asked myself where has the last 20
our sport really is! years gone? My stint at owning the magazine outright on a solo
basis started in 1994, two years after its first publication, al-
though I have been the Editor for all 20 years and I have end-
lessly been chasing copy.
This year I am starting a publicity campaign to expand
sales and I’ll be doing this county by county as people are say-
ing they had no idea that the magazine existed.
A lot of bowlers say they would like it but when you talk
about money they go pale and disappear. Anyway, returning to
my headline question, how many clubs counties and national Associations have publicity officers?
and the answer is very few indeed and none at National level, which is crazy!
Why this is I can’t fathom out. We play a really great sport and I feel the more who play the
better as this gives us a much stronger position when negotiating sponsorships etc. If Short Mat
Bowls was played in most countries then we would have very much stronger position in the UK
but no real effort is being made to sell our sport. So where’s your news?