ARI National Bowls Competition

Big bowls, small bowls and the man in the middle

Spry Finance is a proud supporter of Active Retirement Ireland and this year is the headline sponsor of the 14^th Active Retirement Ireland National Bowls Competition. The event will see hundreds of retirees descending on Killarney – many to participate in, and others to support, one of the largest older sporting events on the Irish sporting calendar.

They come for the sport, they come for the competition, they come for the camaraderie – and they come from all over Ireland for the hope of victory. Aged in their fifties, their sixties, their seventies, their eighties and their nineties, they represent the growing proportion of the Irish population that are living the greater life in later life.

And in amongst the hundreds of participants, there are a wealth of stories to tell – the people who’ve been coming for years, for whom age is no barrier, the people whose job it is to keep it all under control and the families whose members play for different teams and compete against each other.

SPRY HUB Later Life Podcast - episode 3 - SPRY HUB Later Life Podcast - episode 2 - BIG BOWLS, SMALL BOWLS AND THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE

In the third of our Later Life podcast series, we talked to Mark Flanagan, one of the organisers of the tournament and an umpire at the event. Mark talked to us about the finer points of the game and what being an umpire actually entails.

We, of course, were looking for tales of intrigue, of disagreement, of bowls tampering of heated rivalries both on and off the mat – but we were (of course) mistaken. Bowls is a sport that’s fair and gentlepersonly, and where bowling etiquette is taken very seriously.

That’s not to say that the umpire’s job is an easy one – at the level at which the sport is played at the ARI National Bowls competition, there’s finely judged arbitration over distances and careful measurement of how near and how far. While there are no vociferous arguments and players being sent off, it is close and it is competitive.

Listen to Mark’s podcast below:

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Listen to snippets with Mark below:

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