Lawn Bowls: Pastime or Sport?

By Dan Hutton on March 25, 2016 in

Photo: Evan Wylde

As 2016 is an Olympic year, it is a good time to reflect on the obscure so-called sports that seem to serve no other purpose than to gift us with a weird surge of nationalistic pride every four years – “We won gold in the dressage? Yessssss!”

I personally don’t think any of these are technically ‘sports’ and, in all honesty, I couldn’t give two hoots about the Olympics in general. I might get caught up in some of the spirit and watch the odd taekwondo bout, hoping earnestly that a crazy bloke kicks the referee in the head again, but for me, the best part about an Olympic year is that it falls on a leap year, and everybody knows that you get cart blanche on February 29. That’s right, you can do whatever you want and it won’t taint your moral record. February 29 is your god’s way of letting you just go absolutely paint your face in cumquat marmalade and scream at the moon crazy, and not have to deal with the repercussions… or so some drunk guy once told me. He seemed legit. I stand by it.

But February 29 is not a day for lawn bowls. Nor, I would argue (perhaps unpopularly), is any day. Lawn bowls is for the elderly. For the short elderly at that. As a tall man there is no joy in bending down to pick up one of those weighted little bastard balls that taunt me with their unwillingness to go in a straight line. After six beers, that can be a very challenging thing to grasp.

So is lawn bowls, as it claims to be, a ‘sport’?

If I can get all ‘high school English‘ on you for a second, the Oxford Dictionary defines sport as: “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.”

I’m telling you right now, if you are under sixty-five and not terminally ill, lawn bowls should not be physically exerting. If it is, you need to sort yourself out and hit the treadmill.

And who the hell is entertained watching lawn bowls? Certainly not me, nor anyone I’ve ever seen near a bowling green. Teammates don’t even bother watching their partner bowl! They turn their back, grab their drink and start flirting with the nearest member of their preferred sex. Watching that interaction is often far more entertaining.

In fact, using the above definition, it could be argued that flirting is a sport. It’s certainly a competition against other prospective suitors (and often against your target’s better judgement) and there is a fair bit of physical exertion in standing up straight and sucking your gut in. Holding in a fart is also worth about six or seven heart beats per minute.

So, if you are over 65, I will allow you to call lawn bowls a ‘sport’. For anyone else, you’re kidding yourself. Go kick a footy or flirt inappropriately with your friend’s partner – now that’d be a sport worth watching!