Bowls was once a stellar medal-winner for New Zealand at Commonwealth Games down the years. Andrew Alderson, in the first of a series previewing the Delhi Games, looks at the rub of the green.
Of all the sports where a lack of physical activity is inversely pro-portional to the passion generated, lawn bowls ranks high.
The sight of a bowler gently lunging forward, drop-ping the back knee and releasing is one filled with anticipation.
That is inevitably followed by tension, especially at the end of a close match, as the bowl's bias edges it towards the jack, often threading through other bowls.
The euphoria or despair of the final teetering movement as the bowl comes to rest can get crowds out of their seats, especially with Commonwealth Games medals up for grabs.
New Zealand has hauled in 34 Commonwealth medals - 11 gold, 9 silver and 14 bronze - since the sport debuted at the inaugural Games in Hamilton, Canada in 1930. However, with just a solitary bronze to sisters Jan and Marina Khan in the pairs at Melbourne in 2006, the New Zealand team has plenty to prove.
That's partly motivated by an investment of just under $750,000 by Sparc in 2009-10, of which the high performance department received $440,000.
The focus for Delhi has been three-fold: adjusting to the heavier greens, acclimatising to the heat and channelling away from the distractions enveloping the sport in New Zealand over the past 12 months. The first of those distractions involved the verdict that the Gary Lawson-led four deliberately lost an end against Thailand during the Asia-Pacific bowls tourna-ment in Malaysia last August.
The subsequent fines - and a ban for Lawson - resulted in some well-publicised in-fighting with Bowls New Zealand chief executive Kerry Clark which painted the sport as fragmented.
That perception has been reinforced by what many argue is an excessive 10-year ban for former national representative David File. File unzipped his trousers at an Easter tournament and, as he described it, "pulled out my old fella" to show team-mates they were "playing like dicks".
Coach Dave Edwards is out to transform those headlines over the next two months. In January 2008, the sport was receiving better headlines in Christchurch when the Kiwis picked up four gold and two bronze medals at the world championships. Edwards emphasises that the high performance programme and individual grants that followed have helped.
"We make do," Edwards says. "While athletes still have to make a lot of work sacrifices, it's better than 15 years ago when the players would meet on the plane over to an event, have a roll-up on the practice greens and get stuck in.
"We had success doing that, but it was based on pure talent. The rest of the world were doing that too but it has all changed.
"We had the first high performance programme [circa 2000] but Scotland and England also have them these days, while Australia and Malaysia have a number of full-time professional athletes. I'd like to think bowls is a serious sport now, whereas it was once considered a pastime."
That is typified by younger people playing the game. Edwards estimates with Genevieve Baildon (24), Shannon McIlroy (23) and even Ali Forsyth (30) in the team, it is the youngest New Zealand has ever sent to a Games.
"It is pleasing to see they've come through our system after starting in secondary school and playing internationally at under-18 and under-25 level."
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In contrast to the recent professional development and comparative sanitising of the sport, Lawson - who attended the Games at Melbourne and Victoria, Canada in 1994 - says he preferred the good old days' where a beer was readily available to quench a thirst after a long day's play. Players socialised more.
"We enjoyed a fairly hard-case lifestyle off the green, especially in the mid-1990s. In fact, some of the stories are probably best left on tour.
"In contrast, I found both my Commonwealth Games difficult to play because there's so much security you don't really get out much and now it's more professional in terms of [the expected] behaviour. Back then, it was well known everyone had a few beers and that was fine."
After last year's match-fixing fiasco involving Lawson's four, only Shannon McIlroy has survived to contest the triples at Delhi. Jamie Hill and Shayne Sincock were also axed. Lawson was banned for six months and was not available for Delhi.
Like Lawson, McIlroy doesn't want the socialising element completely extinguished at international level.
"It's one of the best things about the sport - you meet new people, share life experiences and look forward to seeing them at future tournaments. I'm only 23 but have a lot of close mates aged between 30 and 50.
"I used to get a bit of stick about that at school when kids would come up and say my grandma says she was playing bowls with you on the weekend'. If anything, it's made me mature quicker and I've learned to respect older people more."
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McIlroy is the youngest member of the New Zealand team while 52-year-old Jan (pronounced Jarn) Khan is the oldest. She is heading to her third consecutive Commonwealth Games, having won bronze medals in the fours at Manchester and pairs at Melbourne.
After July's warm-up tour of Fiji and the Eight Nations trial event in Delhi in April, Khan says the value of health and fitness is paramount.
"We are potentially going to have nine hours and three games on the green, every day. Temperatures should reduce to around 35 degrees on the greens but when we were there, they shot up to 50 degrees at times. We've also paid careful attention to getting our vaccines. The last thing you need is Delhi belly. Only three of our team avoided it in April."
Hydration plays an obvious role in Delhi to combat the high temperatures but Khan and her team-mates have been subjected to a more rigorous fitness regime than the past.
Completing regular 12-minute runs might not seem like a tortuous fitness regime but they offer a relative degree of fitness for bowlers when combined with a gym programme (notably for lunges) and walks of an hour or more before eight hours' practice on the green at training camps.
The emphasis is on stamina for what is expected to be oppressive fatigue. If nothing else, it beats regularly bending an elbow at the bar in those "good old days".
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Bowls has always been as much about cunning and guile as it is about sprightliness and athleticism. That is why one of the core objectives for the team has been to get the best possible gauge of the greens.
All but two of the team - Dale Lang and McIlroy - got to test the Delhi greens in April. The artificial greens are slower and less consistent than anticipated.
"The carpet is a surface no-one had ever played on until that tournament," Edwards says. "They're pretty foreign; slower than anything we've come across. The trouble is we have some of the fastest greens in the world in New Zealand so we can struggle technically."
It means a bowler has to put more energy into the release to cover the necessary turf.
Khan says the greens of Fiji last month and Malaysia in a week will help her and pairs partner Manu Timoti get their approach right.
"The slower ground speed is one of the key areas we looked at. Fiji provided perfect conditions to practice with the added problem of heat. A test series in Malaysia will also help gel our disciplines because rolling up at home is like bowling on glass in comparison."
The Commonwealth Games bowls competition runs from October 4-13.
Rub of the Green:
* New Zealand has hauled in 34 Commonwealth medals - 11 gold, nine silver and 14 bronze - since the sport debuted at the inaugural Games in Canada in 1930.
* The team had a warm-up camp in Fiji to adjust to slower greens in Delhi - they fly out for something similar in Malaysia for 10 days from this Saturday.
* Commonwealth Games bowls consist of two sets of nine ends with a three end tie-break if required.
* Sisters Jan and Marina Khan got New Zealand's only bowls medal - a pairs bronze - at the 2006 Melbourne Commmonwealth Games.
Women:
Manu Timoti (32), pairs lead, Whangarei
Dale Lang (39), two in triples, Wellington
Genevieve Baildon (24), triples lead, Hamilton
Jan Khan (52), pairs skip, Christchurch
Karen Coombe (51), triples skip, Wanganui
Val Smith (45), singles, Nelson
Men:
Richard Collett (30), pairs lead, Nelson
Shannon McIlroy (23), two in triples, Nelson
Dan Delany (32), pairs skip, Auckland
Ali Forsyth (30), singles, Sydney, NSW
Andrew Todd (43), triples lead, Sydney, NSW
Richard Girvan (36), triples skip, Newcastle, NSW
