01 May BOB BOOTH WINS HIS FIRST EVER CROWN GREEN MATCH

What’s so special about that I hear you say? Well Bob is registered blind and is very partially sighted only being able to see a couple of yards in front of him and discern huge objects across the green.

Keith Collins of Huddersfield Rec recommended Bob to join Thongsbridge so he could play short mat bowls in the winter and he was very good on the mat playing 10-12 metre. We persuaded him to give it a go on the green and he agreed to play today in the C team with the writer. We asked the opposing captain if we could use a technique we’d worked on to help him with his road but we didn’t resort to that during the match, that’s for another time perhaps.

We were soon trailing 12-7 but we won the jack and Bob played a particular mark we’d practiced to perfection and we had a run of 12 only dropping a couple of chalks at the penultimate end. It was one of my proudest moments on a bowling green, but there again I’m only a very average second team bowler as the guys around the green were telling me.

What next for Bob? Well he’s off to Hawaii but when he returns it’s a trip to Well Bowled to buy some coloured woods and a coloured practice jack so he can work out which are his woods.