The Cheshire County Bowling Association exists to promote, organise and govern Crown Green Bowls in its area. It operates in conjunction with the British Crown Green Bowling Association.
We run several competitions for Cheshire bowlers:
- Team knockouts
- Brunner Cup - the premier competition
- De-Knoop Cup - for reserve teams
- Norman Cup - for early losers in the Brunner Cup
- Individual competitions
- Inter-league competition
We also enter senior and junior teams in the BCGBA county competition.
The dates of these competitions (and other events) for the 2010 season are now available.
Sadly the Chairman Roy Munford passed away on 3rd, January, 2010 having served the society in various positions since it was revamped in 1987/88.
The Annual General Meering of the Cheshire County Crown Green Referees’ Society will be on Saturday 6th February, starting at 10:00am, at Winnington Park Recreation Club. We will be seeking a new Chairman and Secretary at this meeting.
Any new members wishing to join the society whether it be just to increase their knowledge of the laws of the game or to become a referee at club level through to Inter-County refereeing are welcome to attend the AGM.
Chris Raddy retired as secretary of the asociation at the AGM on 24 October 2009. He successfully steered the association through a difficult time to the present healthy state. We thank him for his service and wish him well in retirement.
Steve Cook (of the Altrincham LV League) was elected to the post of secretary at the AGM. He can be contacted via the contacts page.
Tony Bryning is the county’s Chief Development Officer. He presented his report for 2009 to the council meeting on 13 October.
Congratulations to Helsby Community Sports Club on achieving Clubmark status—the first bowling club in Cheshire to do so.
Clubmark is the national cross sports quality accreditation scheme for clubs with junior sections. It is built around a set of core criteria which ensure that accredited clubs operate to a set of consistent, accepted and adopted minimum operating standards.
The Helsby club learnt a lot in gaining this status, and they are willing to help other bowling clubs travelling the same path. You can contact them via their website.
Chris Morrison (Chairman of Selectors) presented his report to the AGM on 24 October:
We considered that both North Lancs & Fylde and Wales would each regard their match against Cheshire as the tough one in the group and hence we knew we would be faced with stern challenges in both matches, with each of them probably wanting to use their better greens. There was the possibility that we would all beat each other and chalks would be the decider.
The first match against North Lancs & Fylde threatened to be a real tester and we wanted to continue with the success from the previous season’s result in Mid Cheshire when we had a good victory at Owley Wood. We knew (with the future in mind) that we had to gain some further experience for our younger players and chose to start the campaign at Winsford Cons where we believe the players had good green knowledge although we were to be dependant on the vagaries of the weather.
Both our home and our away sides looked pretty strong on paper and we gained a 15 chalk deserved win although this was not by as many as we would have hoped overall.
So to the second match, in which we were certain the Welsh team would be taking us to their infamous carpet where they have triumphed on every occasion by at least 50 chalks.
With chalks in mind our original choice for the home green was ascertained as being available but when the Steward returned from holiday, apparently only he knew that the green was unavailable and we rapidly had to change venue and a couple of the selected players.
We thought the untried home venue of Budenbergs was good enough, but like many County matches, the away team players with strength in depth and experience, often are very difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, we had a good victory at home by 13 chalks, which was reasonable.
We went to “The Carpet” as predicted, and a fantastic result was obtained producing Wales’ first ever defeat and an overall match victory of 33 chalks.
Two out of two and a semi-final place awaited us again, against Yorkshire.
We had a practice match at The Pack Horse in Macclesfield on the spare date, to give this excellent green a try out but we did feel we were struggling to get the right nucleus of home based players to utilise this green in such an important match.
We agonised long and hard about the home venue, taking into account the travelling Yorkshire players’ green knowledge. Our result at Owley Wood the previous year, we hoped could be repeated.
It was not to be the case: we had an excellent 5 chalk victory away at Crossland Moor but unfortunately lost by 12 chalks at home.
This season has again demonstrated that we are only just failing to get over the line and that we have had difficulties selecting 12 strong and experienced players for the home venue. We have encountered again the difficulty of producing the result at home when it matters to support marvellous away team efforts, something that we have encountered in the last couple of seasons and which we will be looking to correct for 2010.
We know that we are highly regarded by other counties for our playing strength and it is our intention in 2010, if selected so to do, to deliver accordingly.
Our younger players are becoming more experienced and are the backbone of our forthcoming campaigns.
We will be focussing on getting the home results to complement our excellent away performances and we are looking at greens that should be capable of producing those vital chalks.