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The history of Getagameofbowls and who has produced it
Contact
Bob Tuck
email bob@paxtoncat.com.au
phone 0882964148
The Author
Getagameofbowls has been produced by Bob Tuck, a member of Brighton Bowling Club, located in the South Western suburbs of Adelaide. He has played bowls for 25 years, is past president of his club and works as a volunteer for BowlsSA. In this role he has worked on the match and programme committee.
In 2001 he experimented with a web site for local clubs in SA to advertise tournaments but did not complete the project.
During winter 2007 he planned a trip through NSW and Queensland which was to include playing as many games of bowls as he could fit with the itinery. The organization of these games took about 40 phone calls, and even where clubs had a web site, he found that these sites did not readily tell him on which days he could visit the club for a social game. When he visited other clubs he was welcomed and most indicated that they would like to see more visitors. He realized that it was not only his club which had difficulty filling social and prize money tournaments
When he returned home he set to work developing getagameofbowls to be a national site.
in 2009 he changed the site so that all listings would be free, with the option for clubs to give a donation to Legacy if they wished
During 2013 and 2014 his volunteer work at Bowls SA increased as he worked to set up the use of the new IMG system for pennant draws, direct results entry by clubs. In winter 2014 he was involved in many traiming sessions for clubs all over the state. This work is reflected in the information available on pennant setting up in the 'Tournaments and Pennant pages in getagameofbowls. This includes powerpoint training sessions and sets of fixture templates to enable draws to be made with no risk of overloading home venues
In 2014 Bob was awarded BowlsSA volunteer of the year.As a consequence of this work getagameofbowls had suffered and was down to a few tournaments in SA.
During 2015 he
worked on the list of clubs with the result that this site now offers the best information on almost all bowling clubs in Australia, showing names, addresses, phone numbers, location map, satellite picture showing greens, and website or facebook page. Enabled a link to club tournament brochures in the details of the tournaments Made a major addition to the site which allows club to make a permanent listing of weekly social games which allows visitors to find a clubs entries from the list of cluibs but also find for every state a list of social games on each day of the week
The weekly social listing system introduced a potential error in that such listings are permanent and do not expire. In order to remind clubs to check their weekly social listings, Bob established a mailing list and started writing tri-annual newsletters called gggazette, In September 2020 these newsletters are going to over 800 clubs and bowlers.
During the Coved19 shutdown in March-June 2020 Bob wrote a book "Lawn Bowls: The Game & How to Play it Well. You can find out more about the book at Play Lawn Bowls Well
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