WHEN THE PRESSURE IS ON

Northern Advocate, 13 March 1948, Page 4

WHEN THE PRESSURE IS ON

Having perused and digested the above, even the most sceptical of cynics should feel a distinct twinge of weariness.

When it is further pointed out that this represents only the first day’s play, a mere preliminary canter compared to a major tournament stretching over the best part of a week, then he should feel completely washed out and hide his head in shame . . . the cad.

It takes more than skill and staying power, to reach the final stages of a big tournament. Take the finalists in the Doel Pairs.

The game was won and lost on the outcome of the very last bowl played, so it can be taken that the contestants were evenly matched. Both pairs possessed that happy blending of agression, steadiness and delicacy of touch, a product of the unity of nerve and brain and the highest trump card of the bowler’s pack. The winners are noted for their imperturbability, their unruffled demeanour. having brought them to many a final.

No old men frequent the bowling greens today. Plenty are up in years, many over 80, but in the words of Shakespeare, ‘He capers, he dances, he has the eyes of youth.” Shakespeare, in his plays, frequently alludes to bowling and he might well have had Dan Rumbal in mind when he wrote the above. A sportsman to his fingertips and well over 70, Dan and his partner with the steady-ag-gressive recipe, had the game won on the last end; it was no fault of theirs that their opponents had the last bowl, and it was all to the credit of the opposing skip that he unhesitatingly summed up the situation. The odds were against a dead draw succeeding on the lightning-fast surface, so he elected a full-blooded drive which shot the jack to the ditch to win a memorable final. But he was tired . . . Dan was tired , , , and the others were tired too.

It’s when you are tired and your arms and legs are numb that you call up all your reserves to produce the delicate shot your skip is asking for. You’ve “had it.”

The sun has blazed from above, the heat and the glare has struck from below. You’ve lifted, kicked and delivered tons of bowls, you’ve concentrated to give your skip your very best and then you’ve padded up the green again to direct the head.

You are alone on the mat and you lift your heart from the vicinity of your socks up to the region of your waistcoat.

You are down on the head. Redrimmed eyes pick the green, your knees buckle and a weary-laden frame sends the last bowl on its way. The ‘old men” creep home in the gathering dusk. “Phew! . . . and they call it an old man’s game!”