The History of Saturday Bowling - Part 2

Memories

Part 2 of Dave Parkin's three-parter looking at the major changes over the 127-years history of Saturday bowling in Huddersfield.

The History of Saturday Bowling in Huddersfield

A Trilogy by Dave Parkin

Part 2: 1943-1969

In 1943, the first radical change took place in the way that the Huddersfield Association organised bowling in their Saturday leagues. Many readers may be surprised to hear that despite WW2 raging in Europe, Africa & the Far East, some sort of normality was occurring with local amateur sport. With many professional sports suspended, local summer sports like cricket & bowling continued albeit without those brave boys fighting for freedom.

As you can see above, the Yorkshire cups were regionalised to avoid unnecessary travel before all regions coming together in the final stages based on entries from each district.

A month later, Huddersfield followed suit with all their four cups being run on a league basis before semi-finals & final were played to determine a winner. All these ties were still played on a neutral basis.

From 1943 until the late 1960’s, very little changed apart from numbers in each cup but the SUBSCRIPTION CUP ran mainly with 4 divisions of 6 teams each playing 5 matches before the end of May at neutral venues. Some small rule changes were made to allow players to register for teams later.

Some midweek fixtures were instigated to ensure that the local league programme finished before the Yorkshire Merit played on the Whitsuntide weekend.

During the 1960’s, the Association struggled for officials especially in the Treasurer & Secretary roles. They advertised externally twice for this role but finally, some younger bowlers were coming to the fore of the organisation with some new ideas. Many of the old guard were of the belief that the model wasn’t broken but statistics of dropping numbers in merits, handicaps & leagues were not backing this up.

By 1969, there was general unrest that there wasn’t enough league bowling locally with the dominant County competitions catering to the better teams but not the ones that lost in the early rounds. Two of Huddersfield’s great administrators were key to suggesting these changes, Arthur Sheard & Stewart Richardson.

The “Wind of Change” in local bowling may have come nearly a decade later from MacMillan’s use of that phrase but more changes were on the horizon.

To be continued ....

Previously ....

Part 1: 1896-1942