Page 32 - Winter 2012

Secret Sport 1:Layout 1 04/01/2013 08:57 Page 1

SHORT MAT BOWLS
32 SHORT MAT BOWLS
THE WORLD’S MOST
THE WORLD’S MOST
SHORT
SHORT
SECRET SPORT? MAT
SECRET SPORT?
MAT
NEWS
You
You don’t agree? then ask yourself the NEWS
question “how many publicity officers do
we have in our sport?” And how many clubs
send in their news? Before searching I can
tell you the answer, very few indeed but the
further question to ask is “why not?”
All of us would surely agree what a great sport Short mat
bowls really is, from tea and biscuits on a club day to
playing for England in either the British Isles or World Championships. You can also play
competitively from under 9 to over 90 and what other sport allows you to do this? For such
a great sport I am eternally puzzled as to why we are so publicity shy. Ask yourself, “how
many times has my club featured in the magazine?” The more people AND other countries
who play Short Mat the stronger our sport will be and will give us a much higher profile, In
turn this will surely give us more benefits like sports funding and sponsorships.
Sadly today, funding, publicity and sponsorships seems geared to elite sports, of which
bowls is certainly not one. This is the reason why the Disabled Short Mat Championships
was eventually cancelled. I was the mat sponsor and Umpire for several years’ running until
the funding for the BSAD (now Disability Sport England) was given to for them solely running
elite sports.
For me the most important thing is sports participation and not just concentrating on
so called elite sports. When I was at school for instance, and yes it was a long time ago,
Football and Rugby were the main school sports, followed by Cricket. I was hopeless at
both Football and Rugby (all that rolling in mud - Ugh!), with cricket I certainly didn’t like the
hard ball whizzing down at me but I could bowl a bit, so I represented my school at Table
Tennis and Chess. I did play cricket after leaving school and got used to the ball. At 14 I or-
ganised my boy’s club’s Football team (we were all hopeless), Table Tennis and Darts
teams, with the latter two being very successful.
Thinking about it, I have been running sports and games for over 50 years and not
one of them was an elite sport, indeed people are still arguing about what is a game and
what is a sport, Darts for instance, game or sport? I think I represent the average non elite
sportsperson or at least a large number of them.
This article is not necessarily about more news for the magazine, although I’m always
pleading for more. It is about more publicity for our sport in general. How many of our short
mat governing bodies across the World have a publicity officer? None as far as I can see
and certainly not the largest two, Ireland and England. And I
still ask “why not?.”
One ESMBA official complained to me recently that we
do not get any National coverage but I then pointed out the
ESMBA didn’t even support our sports only magazine with
items. If they and others don’t take publicity seriously then why
should anyone take notice of Short Mat Bowls? We also have
to remember than in size we are an insignificant in numbers
terms
Websites are of course growing in popularity for including
news etc. whilst these are great (I have several), these only
appeal to a limited audience.