By Mikayla van Loon
After a delayed start to the bowling season, Mooroolbark Bowls Club are looking to hold a steady position in the division one league.
“We only just got promoted last year and we held our place. We’re looking to improve on that. We’ve got a couple of extra players in,” bowls section president Neville Roper said.
“Look, we think we will do pretty well but we’re probably not looking at finals because we’re nowhere near that. But if we can consolidate and finish fifth or sixth, that’s our aim to stay there.”
Mr Roper said the club’s aim for the season across all divisions is just to remain a competitive side in a very competitive league of bowlers.
“The division one side is very competitive and you’ve got just in our area Warburton, Yarra Glen, Heathmont, Donvale. All those clubs are in division one as well. So the bowling out here is very good, it’s a very good standard.”
With six teams registered to play on a Saturday and seven to play on a Tuesday, Mr Roper said Mooroolbark is one of the biggest clubs in the competition.
“I think the last count was about 160 odd people actually affiliated with Bowl’s Victoria so they can actually play pennant and that’d be one of the bigger clubs going around.
“All up we’ve got about 300 members and probably about 230 bowling members. We’ve got our pennant and then we’ve got some people who only pay a fee just to play social bowls on Wednesday and Friday.”
While the competition side of the bowls club is a key element, Mr Roper said more importantly it is the social aspect of getting together to play a sport and have a chat that makes the club such a popular place.
“Because people were locked up for so long, all they wanted to do was get outside and talk to people. Our average age would probably be 70. So we’ve got a lot of elderly people that use the club for their social life as well,” Mr Roper said.
“We don’t focus on the division one side but we also focus on making sure that the people are comfortable down here and there’s a lot of widows, divorcees, all that sort of thing and this is companionship for them.”
But while the ability to get back to playing bowls has been a blessing for many of the members, from the management point of view, Mooroolbark Bowls Club has made the decision to only allow fully vaccinated members from all clubs play at the greens.
“Our club policy is you have to be double vaccinated to play here. You’d probably find if you went around to different clubs, they’ve all got different policies but we actually own this club outright and under those conditions, we can make it a club rule that visiting teams will have to be double vaccinated to play,” Mr Roper said.
“Some clubs at the moment have unvaccinated players playing, which is causing a lot of problems. Some clubs have pulled out and if you pull out you forfeit the game in competition.”
Nevertheless, Mr Roper said the club has been going strong with a good number of memberships and an excitement to return to playing.
Weekend pennant results – Saturday 27 November:
Division one – Mooroolbark 84/17 PTS defeated Bundoora RSL 64/1 PTS
Division two – Mooroolbark 63/0 PTS defeated by Heatherdale 87/18 PTS
Division four – Mooroolbark 106/18 PTS defeated Ringwood 52/0 PTS
Division four – Mooroolbark 68/0 PTS defeated by Box Hill RSL 101/18 PTS
Division five – Mooroolbark 81/6 PTS defeated by Ferntree Gully 88/12 PTS
Division six – Mooroolbark 88/16 PTS defeated Eastwood Golf 65/2 PTS
