The Foreign Residents in the TRNC (TFR)
Flat-Green Bowls – April 2014
by Ralph Kratzer
Last week, a group of TFR members met at the Olive Press restaurant in Lapta to participate in a sporting event of a special kind, flat-green bowling or bowls.
Unlike the popular 10-pin bowling here the targets aren´t pins but a small ball, called “Jack”.
That’s what Wikipedia says about this sport :
Bowls or lawn bowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll biased balls so that they stop close to a smaller ball called a “jack” or “kitty”. It is played on a pitch which ‘may be flat (for “flat-green bowls”) or convex or uneven (for “crown-green bowls”). It is normally played outdoors although there are some indoor venues and the surface is natural grass or artificial turf either.
Bowls has been played since the 13th Century in England, where it is still, to date, a popular sport or recreational activity.
Unfortunately I could not participate in this event this time, so I asked our treasurer Horst Gutowski to tell me about the afternoon.
Here is his post:
For many of our participating members this flat-green bowling event was the first “encounter” with a bowl “of the special kind”! Of course we had to warm up first to become familiar with this sport. The challenge was to place your own bowl as close as possible to the so-called “Jack” (small yellow ball).
But thanks to the good instruction and support from the supervisors on site, we soon saw success.
Too bad that it started to rain later and we had to retreat to the interior of the Olive Press restaurant. But a lot of nice conversations and the announcement to repeat this sporting activity comforted us over the wetness from above.
