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The Demise of Short Mat Bowls?

By Elaine Gathercole

I was interested to read Bob’s comment in a recent email about our
“shrinking sport” and the loss of substantial numbers of short mat bowlers.
I’d like to start a discussion on what is going on and why.
I am Captain of Welburn, a club in a small village in North York-
shire, and am the League Secretary for the Ryedale Short Mat Bowls
League – but write this article purely in a personal capacity.
My club had 20 members in 2019/20, but eight of these are no longer members in
2022/3. Of the eight, one couldn’t play while waiting 3 years for a new hip (just had it done and hopes
to return – aged around 90); four just lost interest and three now prefer long mat. Thankfully we
picked up five new members, leaving us with 17 in total. Three of the five joined because a family
member already played, one because a friend played and one because his previous club, whom we
used to play against in our league, had folded.
This is despite our attempts to advertise the club to attract completely new members in our
own and surrounding villages at the start of the season by various means but with very little success.
Moreover, two of our members joined but do not actually participate – one because he needed to
join a club to compete at higher levels and the other so he could help out if we were very short for
league matches.
This effectively left me with 15 players to consider for League Matches which, until 2019/20,
used to require teams of 12 players (4 rinks of triples playing with 3 woods each).
In 2019/20 the Ryedale League consisted of 6 clubs – a situation which was stable for many years.
However, clubs were struggling so much with finding players that we decided for 2021/2 to drop to
just 2 rinks for League games, requiring teams of just 6 players.
Even with that reduction, other clubs are still struggling. We kept it at 6 players for 2022/3,
but one club, which was one of the founding members of the league, folded as they had too few
players even to field a team of six, especially as several who did play had problems with eyesight
which meant they were short of drivers to get to matches. Another club had to move venues to share
with another club as their previous premises increased their rent so much it was unviable for them
to continue given how few players there were to share the costs. Other clubs are still struggling to
find enough players.
The issue of driving was not limited to one club. The league used to play games at 7pm – but
an increasing number of clubs were struggling to get people willing to drive at night in winter – so we
switched to a hybrid approach where some games were played at 2pm and some at 7pm. The only
other league in our area has switched completely to 2pm games. Do we give in and accept Short
Mat Bowls is just game for the retired (who will progressively become an older group as retirement
ages increase and fewer can afford to retire early) – or do we cause clubs to fold because people
are unwilling to drive at night?
As two of my players are a working father and his schoolgirl daughter and some others do
voluntary or caring work in afternoons, this limits my choice of players in my own club for afternoon
matches – and threatens to put the younger
members off Short Mat Bowls.
During and post Covid, there seems
to have been a switch away from Short Mat
to Long Mat. As well as the three who
switched completely to Long Mat, about five
of our current members now play both for-
mats – and this sometimes limits their will-
ingness to play in Short Mat League
matches.
Why should Long Mat have pros-
pered while Short Mat declined during the
Covid era?