Yorkshire Merit - a personal view

Bowling News

Dave Parkin is a keen observer of crown green bowling in the Huddersfield and Yorkshire areas. He observes from afar as, although he was born and raised in Huddersfield, he now lives in Malta.

Dave often sends me good statistics and postings for the HuddWeb website and sometimes expresses a personal view on topical matters. This is one such posting I am happy to include. Dave stresses that this is his personal opinion and as it is primarily about the Yorkshire Merit competition I forwarded a copy to Steve Cochrane the Chief Executive Officer at Yorkshire CCGBA and offered HuddWeb as a platform for any comments he wished to add to Dave's contribution. He duly responded and that response follows Dave's posting below.

Dave Parkin On the 29th April, I believe it was announced that Guiseley BC, affiliated to the Aire & Wharfe district had been chosen to host the 2025 Yorkshire Merit. This was the only announcement I could find until Huddersfield announced their qualifying date. Huddersfield have no league fixtures on 24th May so in theory have a pool of 550+ bowlers who would normally take to the greens to better 2024’s entry total of 37 (highest in Yorkshire).

YCGBA social media is silent on the matter of the 2025 Yorkshire Merit.

Qualifying for finals day is via individual qualifiers organised by the 11 districts of the YCGBA. Each choose when, where & how they run these for their playing members & once the closing date (Friday 16th May for Huddersfield) for entries has passed, each district is allocated final places based on their percentage of total entries.

In 2024, 206 entries were received, one of the lowest (Covid excepted) number of entries ever. Given the lack of central pushing plus only 6/11 districts have announced dates that I have found, I suspect this year, it will be even less.

Skipton despite having the 2023 winner, Robbie Ellis didn’t send anyone in 2024 to Low Harold and they along with Bradford, East Coast, Leeds & Wakefield have not made announcements visible to me.

As many players are members of clubs straddling more than one district, surely there is merit (pun intended) in driving entries from the top downwards like many other counties do.

South Yorkshire’s simple but effective poster.

The Yorkshire Merit was first played for in 1985 & has been in its traditional Whitsun slot since 1896 when 92 players played for £40 of prizes with the winner getting a gold watch valued at 15 guineas.

On a more serious note, the total entries are used by the BCGBA to allocate spots at the All Britain in July & if they drop lower, the maximum number of places (8) for Yorkshire could be in jeopardy.

My plea, please support the Merit both in playing numbers but also in promoting it for spectators & followers from afar too.

Your COUNTY needs you.

I sent a copy of this posting to Steve Cochrane (Yorkshire CCGBA CEO) in advance of publication and he generally agrees with the points that Dave has put forward. He pointed out that Yorkshire has a record of always having the highest number of entries for the County Qualifying Competition, exceeding 200 every year in total and he doesn't believe that this resulting in 8 annual Yorkshire entries into the BCGBA Merit competition is under threat.

He also commented on the practice of rotating the Yorkshire Qualifying Competition in a different district each year as a genuine attempt to encourage wider representation in the individual district qualifying competitions.

We are always interested in receiving opinions on anything about local, county or national crown green bowling and posting on the website if considered to be of interest to others.