Irish Road Bowling - An Obituary
Words by Colm Connolly
For those of you who have had the experience of driving down a country road in the afternoon around Cork City, only to be stopped by a man in a hi-vis vest waving you to slow down as a mountain of older men in brown jackets and dodgy haircuts emerge behind him, at first making you assume some sort of far-right rally is occurring out by Whitechurch for whatever reason, I must inform you that there is nothing to be alarmed about. What you are witnessing is a sport that once held the esteem in Cork City of attracting the likes of Bishop John Buckley, and is now being kept on life support as it is on it’s last legs; this sport is known as Road Bowling.
I have been going to Road Bowling scores with my Father since I was a young child. I have to admit, it was not out of any interest in the sport itself that I attended but more so purely because of a lack of available babysitters on a Saturday (I don’t want to make my childhood out to be like Frank McCourts or anything but it was difficult to find baby sitters at weekends). The intense boredom I felt at these games, which revolves around a slightly overweight but fit enough middle aged man throwing an eight ounce ball of lead at a group of West Cork men as they jump out of the way to avoid it, made me at times wish that it was my head that was getting bowled down the road. I was playing rugby at the time and turned my nose up at this incredibly dull and dying “sport” my Dad had played so much in his youth. However, just last Tuesday, as I sit around my house with little to do, waiting anxiously to move out of my house to Dublin for college next year, I begged my Dad to go to a score that he was in two minds about attending, purely so I could come along to watch.
I have a new found love for this sport, which is in it’s last generation. For me, golf is just as dull and boring a sport as road bowling, without the vast array of characters that attend these scores on roads up by Blackpool and across West Cork. Yet golf has prestige, it has an old boys network connotation and Golf Club membership was a staple of Celtic Tiger Ireland among wealthy financiers and politicians. People will probably look down on those at Road Bowling scores as slightly disheveled country bumpkins who enjoy watching a grown man throw a ball of lead down a road, as opposed to viewing their game of golf as a grown man hitting a ball with a stick lightly, and then walking after it. The crowds at Road Bowling are like no other. My Dad points out to me legends of the sport, hall of famers, who walk the country road with their friends and peers as if they had, like me, just come to get out of the house for a few hours. The name “Mick Barry” is thrown out in many a conversation I pick up on. He is considered the greatest of them all. “I’ll never get over losing to him lads” says one man, reminiscing on the day he almost beat the man they consider the unbeatable. Bets and odds are shouted randomly as they all make their way to the next throwing spot. “I bet he’ll lead lads, I’m fucking mad”. The two men throwing have their crews with them, maybe not as big or illustrious as the crews of McGregor and Mayweather, but crews nonetheless. They give each man advice on where on the road he should be angling toward, where he has to get to. The bowler his fag on the ground whilst he throws so he can resume smoking afterwards (needless to say, the sports personal training and health keeping aspects are not enforced by any high standard of fitness, as it would have been years before).
My Dad charges up the road with this gang of 40 odd men. He informs me that the scores have never been quieter. “There used to be a hundred odd here 50 years ago, even 20 years ago there’d be that much”. He points out men who are doctors, street sweepers, former Cork footballers, men just out of jails and men who could have “wiped the floor” with the top senior players today back in their time. At the end of the score, one man makes the finishing point before the other in less throws and all is over, the money is collected and handed over with grins and smart comments. There is no proper official from the Bowling board there, just one man nominated to do the monetary and administrative duties. The 40 odd of them all walk back to their carelessly parked cars, discussing the weekends scores and where they will be on…and if they will be on. It is certainly a dying sport, and whilst it may not be the most entertaining or challenging, it would be a great shame to see it go.
