Page 17 - Winter 2013

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to reach the head, it pauses beside the jack, too far 17
away but wait the wood is still moving and plonk, falls
down towards the jack. The half-inch wins the Tourna-
ment. Great cheers reverberated around the arena.
All the participants on the day expressed their pleas-
ure in attending and those who stayed to watch felt the final
had enhanced the tournament and all can’t wait for more
Jurassic events. The next event – A Fancy dress - Fun day
TwoPairFours in April 2014. For further details contact
Jurassic.bowls@gmail.com.
David Hayler

SWIVELLING
SWIVELLING
CENTRE BLOCKS
CENTRE BLOCKS
Many years ago, I think in 1985 or
possibly 1986, certainly no later we
(The ESMBA) banned centre
blocks that swivelled in the middle.
Originally these were all hand
made.
Take an upside down mar-
garine type tub and fill it with concrete adding a swivel piece and two hooks, one each side. When
the concrete set you turned it over and added a 15” long piece of wood to the swivel centre and
add elastic bands to either end and the two side hooks. Thus you had a self centering centre block
as the elastic bands brought it back to the centre when disturbed.
A great idea you may think but as they were homemade and the construction varied and
most importantly with varied strength of elastic bands on these home-made items. They were
therefore not consistent in their movement, so we banned them.
I remember the discussion at committee and we were unanimous owing to their inconsistency
as with some slack elastic bands a breeze might move them. However, someone is now making
these swivelling blocks professionally and with metal springs that would guarantee some good
consistency of spring strength wherever they are used.
I am not advocating these at this stage and I have de-
clined to advertise them at the moment as they are not
in the rule book.
However, it is a pain in the rear end replacing the
centre bock every time it his hit and I think there should
be some discussion on the subject as I’m certainly not
a luddite when it comes to progress. At the very least,
in club nights and club tournaments etc. etc. we could
perhaps consider their use might be allowed?
A few years ago someone made centre blocks that had small lights that lit when the centre
block was touched. I distinctly remember an ESMBA committee member advocating these and
extolling their virtues I told him I was certainly not convinced. He tried to demonstrate and his first
bowl was at least an inch from touching the centre block as it passed but the light went on!
End of subject and they were never seen again. A generally good idea but they were obvi-
ously inconsistent and I could hear the club pantomime arguments in advance, “Oh yes it did, Oh
no it didn’t” in many clubs around the country if their use had been allowed. As to the profes-
sionally produced swivelling centre block what do you think?