Ilford & District Indoor Bowls Club

After a spring and summer fighting to get the Club ready to reopen, here we are in November, back to square one again! Of course we are not alone. Indoor bowls nationwide has been suspended until at least the 2nd December. All we can do now is to sit and wait for the OK from the EIBA to allow us to open and be ready when it happens. It is such a shame because we made such a positive start to the season. Whilst some members did not feel comfortable returning to the club, we still managed to sign up 27 new members. You have to spare a thought for these new ladies and gents who were just getting to grips with the game of indoor bowls only to be stopped in their tracks by a microscopic invisible organism. We can assure you and our established members that we will reopen as soon as we possibly can and hopefully you will all be back and bowling before the end of the year.

With just a couple of days to go before we officially re-open, we have a few minutes to reflect how much we have achieved to get to this point.

Our main achievement has been the installation of our new playing surface but did that go smoothly? In preparation for the new carpet, we needed to assess the condition of the side and back boards. The car park side boards were seen to be rotten, mainly because water has been getting under the foundations for probably years. They all had to be replaced. Then we looked at the back boards and many of them were smashed probably due to Paco’s (and others’) overzealous firing. Again these were replaced by our own A-Team of volunteers at minimal expense.