Fewer playing lawn bowls

By Shaun Inguanzo
LAWN bowls participation is on the decline in Greater Dandenong, a new report shows.
Greater Dandenong councillors this week adopted a lawn bowls and croquet plan that discusses in detail the city’s lawn bowls and croquet facilities, and any hurdles to maintaining, retaining, relocating or building new ones.
Leisure planner Tatiana Lunn prepared the report to council, and said the plan was in response to two issues.
The first, she said, was that the city’s aged population was expected to increase significantly in the next 20 years with the number of over-75s set to double by 2030.
Secondly, with lawn bowls and croquet facilities set to move from Dandenong Park as part of that park’s redevelopment, the council needed to formulate a plan to ensure they were moved to an appropriate location.
The figures in Ms Lunn’s report show that of the lawn bowlers in Greater Dandenong, 61 per cent are male and 39 per cent female.
The female percentage is higher than the state average of 35 per cent, she said.
But the figures recorded since 2004 show that overall participation in lawn bowls has decreased by more than 11 per cent.
“This represents an average loss of 3.96 per cent of pennant numbers per annum across all clubs,” she said.
Ms Lunn said the city had seven bowls clubs with 13 greens, and a green to almost every 5000 of the city’s residents tagged ‘most likely to play lawn bowls’, based on age and country or origin.
This, she said, was different to the one green to 10,000 people likely to play figure that was a ‘standard benchmark’ for bowls facilities in a municipality.
“This suggests there are more lawn bowls greens provided in the city than is currently required,” Ms Lunn’s report said.
“If the percentage of residents born in traditional bowls playing countries were to remain stable over the next 15 years, based on the predicted population growth, 13 greens would still be considered more than adequate to cater for future needs.”