Do you miss The Examiner bowling pages?

Bowling News

There was a time that The Huddersfield Examiner was the focus of local bowlers every Thursday with in-depth coverage of local leagues and competitions. That has all changed with editorial matters transferring to the new owners, Trinity Mirror Group, and their reporting base shifting to Manchester.

Over the past 3-4 years the amount of space dedicated to bowling has gradually decreased and I know from personal experience how disheartening that can be for people who submit reports and photographs which never see the light of day. Having said that the Veterans League benefitted over that period as the weekly submissions I was responsible for producing often being the only coverage available to be included.

It still seems to me that there is still a lot of interest in reading about local bowling among bowlers and their friends and families. If The Examiner cannot provide that any longer then maybe there should be an alternative means of keeping up to date with who is beating who and by how many. Bowlsnet provides an excellent base for providing the raw statistics of results, tables and bowler averages for everyone to access but there is still room for an alternative look at how teams and individuals are performing.

At a time when bowling is still reeling from the impact of the pandemic on the back of a depleting number of teams over recent years that we all have a part to play in protecting the future of our sport. I would like to do my bit and hope that others will as well.

That being the case I am going to try and help fill that publicity gap. During the season I will try to provide another dimension to reporting of bowling in the local leagues by using the data available from Bowlsnet, my knowledge and instinct (this may be sadly lacking on both fronts) and local 'moles' to produce reports on some of our local leagues. The Huddersfield Live website doesn't call contributors 'moles' they call them 'Ambassadors' instead which sounds a bit pretentious to me so I'll stick with moles.

You can all help by telling me about anything that happened in your club, match or league at any time. You are welcome to become a member of my 'colony of moles' to provide some insight into what is happening in the unique world of Huddersfield crown green bowling. The alternative is that we do nothing and just contribute to the mood of doom and gloom as we see our sport disappear down the plughole! Better to try and fail than to do nothing at all and feed the pundits who tell you not to waste your time but some of us do care.