admin

Chris Gray been tasked by our Committee with setting up and acting as Administrator for a new Club-wide WhatsApp Group.

Now, before you say, oh no, not another ***** WhatsApp group, let him explain!.

For a number of years, the men of our Club have had access to the ‘Berkhamsted BC Men’ group and last year I created a ‘BBC Men’s Captain Info’ group, specifically targeted at those men who participated in our competitive male matches.

However, what we do not have is a group for ALL of our members, regardless of sex, ability or even just our social members. The aim of this new WhatsApp Group is inform all Members, as the need arises to keep everyone up-to-date with all things concerning our Club on a regular basis.

Currently, our Club has some major plans to improve the parking capacity, which will include some reorganisation of our sheds. This will require a lot of assistance from our members, with a ‘working’ day taking place on Friday 17th February, starting at 9.30am. NB: It will not only be manual labour that is required on this and subsequent days !

This new WhatsApp Group will allow us to circulate events like this to all members in a quick and timely manner, before and once the season starts. And from late April, it can be used for all sorts of our bowls season, including forthcoming matches, late player call-ups due to absence, updates of results and pictures, to name just a few advantages of this new facility.

Now, a little bit of administration to make this WhatsApp Group a success

– No frivolity, please IE: No memes, GIFs, jokes (funny or rude !) etc
– No posting at unsociable times (nothing before 8am or after 10pm)
– Keep your posts brief and relevant to our Bowls Club, only
– The constant ‘pinging’ or vibration of a mobile can be really annoying ; Therefore, to keep the messages down to a minimum, after someone posts on the Group, can I ask our Members to refrain from ‘liking’ a post by putting a thumbs-up emoji or a short message like “Congratulations’ or “hard luck”.

I would encourage as many members as possible to join this new WhatsApp Group. You must have WhatsApp on your phone – if you haven’t then download it now! You can contact me directly and I can add you, or send me a Msg (WhatsApp, Text etc), or use the following link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/ChMPVk8pWYtEXVJNlVGos8 or, for those members more tech savvy, use the QR Code below!

Lastly, I/we do appreciate and recognise that some of our members either do not have a more modern smart mobile or are not that au fait with some of our current technology. Therefore, our Club will continue to post information on its Facebook site and endeavour to spread news via word of mouth and information posted on our notice boards.

For any more information, or to report any issues, please contact me, Chris Gray (07961 918353)

If you have WhatsApp already on your mobile device you can sign up using the QR code below:

January 2021 opinion piece

It looks like happy scenes like this to the left are not going to be repeated in our Clubhouse for some time soon.

All we can hope is that everybody does their bit to get the virus transmission down by obeying the social interaction rules, even if/when they have received their vaccinations. The latter is not an individual’s magic passport to better times – the post author believes those times have to wait until nearly all of the adult population has been immunised.

Hopefully this will allow some form of Bowling to resume towards the end of April/early May.

For the last friendly game of the season on the 19th of September Berkhamsted played Wendover Bowls Club away. It was an excellent day – the green played well and the weather was good. It was a close fought competition, but congratulations go to the winners Wendover by 82 shots to 103. Berkhamsted’ s top rink players were Jackie Healey, Dave Drew and skip Jackie Cormack. Captain for the day was Dagmar McKay.

On Sunday, the last day of the season, Berkhamsted held its traditional President’s day in which fourteen team of triples played three matches with points being accumulated for winning ends and matches. The winning team was Steve Burrell, Noreen Codina & John Bell who totalled a very impressive 37 points. The theme for the day was ‘Flora & Fauna’ and the spider contest raised money for Parkinsons.

A blend of new members, juniors, experienced bowlers and competition winners retired to the clubhouse after for a superb buffet laid on by the First Lady and her helpers providing a very successful end to a season in which Berkhamsted achieved a lot of success in the County & District competitions

The 2 Photo’s show Dave Sear in the best Flora & Fauna costume of the day, the other showing all the participants prior to the competition.

On Friday Berkhamsted played Kings Langley in the Dacorum Charity Shield. Although they have already won this Competition this season Berkhamsted beat them 4 Games to 1. The Ladies team of Carol Dunn, Dagmar McKay, Kay Lingwood and Jackie Cormack won 27-22; The Men’s team of Bob Anderson, Bill Howells, Trefor Jenkins and Tony Howard won 35-13 (and were Top Rink) and the mixed team of Liz Baker, Sylvia Smith, Brian Ralphs and David Brown lost 15-22. However, Berkhamsted won overall by 77 shots to 57 shots. Two Friendly games were also played and these teams were; Marion Maynard, Stuart Wesley, Steve Shearing and Ken Maynard who drew 20-20 and Eric Lloyd, Gill Howells, Alan Baker and Maurice Primo who unfortunately lost 18-22.

On Saturday a friendly match was played against Berkhamsted’s old rivals Kitcheners, from just down the road and Berkhamsted managed to win a game played on a lovely warm day by 82 shots to 69. The top team for Berkhamsted was Noreen Codina, Brian Smith, Sylvia Smith and Dave Sear.

Berkhamsted Bowls Club held its Finals this weekend starting on Friday evening with the Semi-Finals of the Mixed Triples to determine the Finalists for Sunday Afternoon. There were 8 finals on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday and we were blessed with fine, if cool at times, weather. We were treated to some fine bowling and some close matches on an excellently prepared green. Sarah Marshall, our blind bowler won her first club championship and then went on to win two more (aided by her directors; Liz Temple & Linda Ralphs).

The highlights included: The Men’s Singles between Kevin Clarke and Jack Bunting, The 2-Wood Men’s Singles between David Brown & Jack Bunting; The Highland Trophy Singles – where Tony Howard narrowly beat Brian Ralphs; The U19 Singles Final was a very high class match between the Bunting brothers with Jack beating younger brother Toby by 3 shots and lastly the Fours was decided with a last end winning shot – doesn’t come much closer than that!

The Results were as follows…..

Ladies Singles: Winner: Kay Lingwood; R/Up: Jackie Cormack;

Men’s Singles Winner Kevin Clarke; R/Up: Jack Bunting;

Ladies 2-Wood Singles: Winner: Sarah Marshall; R/Up: Jackie Cormack;

Men’s 2-Wood Singles: Winner: David Brown; R/Up: Jack Bunting;

Highland Trophy Singles: Winner: Tony Howard; R/Up: Brian Ralphs; Handicap Singles: Winner: Kevin Clarke; R/Up: Bob Anderson;

Veterans Singles: Winner: Tony Howard; R/Up: David Sear;

Novice Singles: Winner: Linda Ralphs; R/Up: Eric Lloyd;

Newcomers Singles: Winner: John Bell; R/Up: Toby Bunting;

U19 Singles: Winner: Jack Bunting; R/Up: Toby Bunting;

Ladies Pairs: Winners: Kay Lingwood & Sarah Marshall; R/Up: Anne Furlong & Jackie Cormack;

Men’s Pairs: Winners: David Brown & Bob Anderson; R/Up: Terry Kenyon & John Webb;

Mixed Pairs: Winners: Jack Bunting & Sarah Marshall; R/Up: Anne Furlong & Tony Howard;

Pedlow Trophy (Australian Pairs): Winners: Toby Bunting & Luke Swan; R/Up: Frank Cutting & Jackie Cormack;

Mixed Triples: Winners: Peter Rowling, Jenny Carr & Bob Anderson; R/Up: Tom Presland, Tim Bailey & Noreen Codina;

Mixed Fours: Winners: Liz Temple, Paul Shorne, Stephen Shearing; Gill Howells; R/Up: Steve Burrell, Lynn Kessler, Geoff Drew & Anne Cutting.

Trial post for use with new Elementor page

January 2021 opinion piece

Press Report W/E 22nd September

Press Report W/E 15th September

Finals Weekend Press Report

Finally a big thank you to all who helped make the weekend a resounding success – we love it when a plan comes together!