February | 2016 | The World According to Me…

bowls

By Terry O’Neill

Bowls North Otago successfully completed its women’s pentangular tournament last weekend involving Senior women and Development women from the five Centres south of Christchurch: South Canterbury, North Otago, Central Otago, South Otago and Southland.

Teams played singles, pairs, triples and fours on two greens in Oamaru in over 100 games superbly organised by Brian Papps and umpires, Bruce Kelly and Graham Thorn, and with cooperation from the other four centres. The senior womens section operated smoothly.

And the “But” . . . Unfortunately Southland and South Canterbury, neglected to provide essential details of their development womens teams, and listed names only with not an iota of information about team composition and skips. As the tournament began on the Saturday morning, umpires had the additional stress of seeking this information. Hopefully a robust message educated those centres on their basic responsibilities.

This scenario may be indicative of a sports administration trend in which even more is expected to be done by the responsible, declining few. It’s an unfettered malaise that has evolved over the four decades I have been associated with bowls and other sports .

Blame may rest at the feet of professionalism whereby the national bodies tend more to be concerned with promotion of those exclusives at the top of the food chain. In too many cases the roles of governance and management are clouded. Let’s hark back to the days of the late Arthur Familton who, as North Otago secretary, ran bowls with a very firm hand although some might agree his “firm” might have been be a tad lenient. Governance is the aspect of the committee which decides policy, and management involves those appointed to apply that policy to their sport. The two have become integrated to the detriment of sport. Only time hopefully, and a change in attitudes will ensure a more favourable response to the tasks demanded of administrators.

Can you imagine dealing with a multitude of bowls results on scorecards attributed to Tom, Sandy, Jude, Margie, and the like? These do not identify the players to anyone outside the intimacy of the green so it would be appreciated if full names of skips and players are always recorded.

Meanwhile it’s time to celebrate local sport. The North Otago Sports Bodies annual Sportsperson of the Year function is early March at the Opera House. Once again over fifty individuals have been nominated by their respective sports over a wide range of codes ranging from equestrian horse cutting through to trap shooting, motorcross and downhill mountain biking. Coaches are acknowleged too with Narcis Gherca (swimming), Owen Gould (Rowing), Ray Boswell (trap shooting and hockey),and Hamish McMurdo (cricket/rugby refereeing).

The traditional award for Administrator of the Year may be now be covered by the Services to Sport award. Sports administration is often a thankless task.

Let’s salute these behind-the-scenes sports people who make things happen. Without their fastidious care, knowledge, humour and leadership, sports could not function.

ENDS

liniment

By Terry O’Neill.

There are those who claim that to grow, one must change often.If this is true, the International Rugby Board would appear to have become almost rabid, when compared with its approach to changes in the past.Change for the sake of change has little chance of being accepted and when looking at rule changes to the game one might well ask,why?

Whether it has been the drop in temperature at the beginning of this week or whether the build up of super rugby stories has been some motivation, I feel that the 2016 rugby season is approaching, or maybe its just a throwback to the whiff of liniment used prolifically in my time.Today liniment would have been looked upon as an performance enhancing additive, although it could have quite an impact on tender parts of the anatomy!

The 2016 rugby season will bring law changes although not necessarily across the board. Why introduce law changes at the first class level before club level is a bit of a mystery to me but rugby fans will have to get used to the fact that the beloved “ruck” will no longer be in the rugby vocabulary, replaced by “breakdown”.Hands will not be allowed by the tackler thus negating the skills of Richie McCaw and David Pocock.Get used to the idea that there will be two referees on the paddock and that penalty tries will be worth eight points,a try worth six points and a penalty is reduced to two points.

The new “breakdown” will form as soon as just one attacking player is over the ball on the ground.The old “gate” is gone and as long as players come from their side of the ball they may enter at any angle.At the breakdown it is proposed that the offside line will be a metre back from the hindmost foot of the hindmost player. It is expected that this will encourage defending teams to contest the breakdown more often instead of just creating picket fence defensive lines. It is envisaged that the “lead” referee will look after the breakdown and the second whistle blower will scrutinise the offside line.

The proposed laws have been trialled in domestic competitions in Australia, South Africa and Wales.In Australia it was noticeable that kicks at goal were reduced and there was a lot more kicking for touch but a lot more tries were scored,although on the negative side there were more yellow cards issued as the value of penalties had been reduced.

With the local club rugby set down to kick off on April 2^nd, the Saturday after Easter, the North Otago Rugby Union is waiting for information from the NZRU as to which,when and if the law changes will be invoked.

It appears that the Citizens Shield and other competitions will utilise only the change in points for tries and penalties.One problem that will arise with the two referee suggestion is that with four referees,two assistant referees(line umpires) and the two on field referees, required for each game it may mean that lower grades could suffer.

For those looking further afield the Heartland competition will start a week later on the 22^nd August with the finals set down for 29^th October after Labour weekend.