Australian sports : Lawn bowls sneak peek

What's up?

Since I arrived in Australia 2 months and a half ago, I've had time to see and play different Australian sports, the 3 most famous being :

• Australian football, also called "footy"
• Cricket
• Lawn bowls

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I went Sunday 3rd of April with the university to see a footy match in the huge Melbourne Cricket Ground and it was really fun (Thanks free meat pie). We also watched a cricket training next to Albert Park few weeks ago.

Although I will focus in this article about lawn bowls.

Fitzroy Lawn Bowling club

I first heard about this sport while we were in the Grampians. It's very popular in Commonwealth nations, and we saw a part of a match on TV between New-Zealand and Australian top women teams. Few days later, Elodie and Marika, two of my flatmates, asked to Lauriane and I if we wanted to go play at Fitzroy Lawn Bowling club, in Brunswick Street, with English friends of them.

We went there and paid 15$ to participate in a small tournament. This is not a lot considered we had 2 beers and a very good barbecue included.

The rules of this game are similar to pétanque, the French game. However, the population playing the game is quite young compared to it. We competed against 3 other teams of 4, not a person older than thirty. 

Biased bowls

The game has 2 steps : First the winning team launch the "Jack", a small yellow ball, then every player in each team launch his 2 bowls when comes his turn, trying to get the closest possible to the Jack. When every player threw his bowls, the team with the closest gets one point, plus one point for every other bawl his team own which is the closest.

So what's the difference with pétanque you will ask :

• You play barefoot on lawn, and drink beer. Carlton Draught beer taste way better than Pastis anyway.
• Bowls are biased : one side is heavier than the other. Hence when you launch the bowl, the trajectory is a curve. It creates special strategies where you can try to get around other bowls and in consequence this sport involves less "fire", or "strike", which are draw where you try to kick other bowls.

Lauriane, Marika, Benjamin

We won the first round, but then got our ass kicked in the final 18 to 3 by some regulars who won 5$ as first prize. It was a lot of fun and a very good experience, although with the winter coming we would better take a jacket next time we want to play at sunset.