By WO1 Mick Carley
The Australian Services Bowls Association (ASBA) are preparing
for their National Championships in Brisbane from September 01-05.
Throughout the country over the next few months, state associations
are conducting their selection trials for the national event.
The nationals are supported by local Brisbane club, Ferny Grove
Bowls Club which is also the venue this year.
Royal Queensland Bowls Association also supports the nationals
by providing their state tactician and selector to assist in selecting
the national team.
The ASBA championships is a sanctioned event IAW ADF Sports Council
and DI(G) Pers 14-2 and is for bowlers of all degrees of competency
and both genders. Lawn bowls is one of the few sports that competes
without gender bias.
The championships incorporate competition between all states in
a combined service format and a national competition between the
three Services that follow World Bowls Board and Bowls Australia
format and rules.
Interservice and combined service competitions are conducted at
both state and national level with the national team playing fixtures
against visiting countries and now every year against a local
Brisbane side. They also compete every second year at the Arafura
Games in Darwin.
The games this year saw the biggest ever medal tally won by any
team since the inception of the games in 1995 - Fours - Gold,
Pairs - Silver, Singles - Bronze and overall Best Performed Team
- Gold.
One of the pre-requisites to play in Service competition is that
ADF members are to be members of a civilian club - most play at
the higher level in their own clubs because of the competitiveness
that is incorporated in Defence sport.
This years nationals are heading towards their biggest in several
years with seven states represented to date.
Victoria, who were the dominating state for a period of time but
have been on the outer lately, are rebuilding their state association
and appear to be a formidable opponent once again with several
top class bowlers returning to the state.
All services are represented at the nationals and any ADF member,
including reservists, are eligible to compete.
The association has more than 300 bowlers listed on its records,
this is perhaps only about one quarter of the total of bowlers
throughout the ADF.
The game is expanding in the civilian community as it is attracting
more of the younger generation. Long gone are the days where bowls
was considered an ‘oldies’ game.
The image of lawn bowls tends to suffer somewhat in an organisation
that perhaps fancies itself as being at least a little on the
gung-ho side! There are some that perhaps feel that unless a person
comes back from a sporting activity muddied, bloodied, bruised
and sweating, then he or she hasn’t really ‘put in’.
But consider the following attributes of the game which relate
to service in the ADF:
