Memories
From the Huddersfield Daily Examiner of 17 May 1975
The lunchtime love of Hilton Bamforth is a tricky little piece. Sometimes fast sometimes slow Always demanding and never very easy to pick up with casual acquaintance. I refer of course to the Gledhili Sports Bowling green an area of turf which Hilton provides with daily mid-day maintenance at Lockwood And thirty-two Huddersfield bowlers will reap the reward of his care and attention for it when they go on to the green for the intermediate stages of the Bass North Handicap tomorrow afternoon.
Five years ago this brewery green was a wilderhess But now in a transformation scene which would have graced any pantomime stage it is one of the best in the district And if there was an award for the most improved green like the Huddersfield Cricket League have the Greenwood Trophy for the most improved ground this one would surely be a top contender Gledhili Sports took over the green for their first summer in 1971 And before that —apart from being cut once a year for the final day the Licensed Victuallers Handicap it hadn't been played on for many a long year.
“I had a lot of assistance from Jackie Cuerden and Harold Shaw at the beginning” said Hilton “We had to take up twenty square yards of solid moss and replace it with turf from the putting green which runs alongside the green And one Saturday morning hired the Corporation steam roller and did nothing but roll it” And now in addition to being one of the best in the district it’s also one of the trickiest The difference between th fast and slow ways Can be colossal “As much as six yards” says the man who looks after it “It takes some bowling Even the best them come here and can’t find it And when it is really running in summer you have a job to hold them on when you’re bowling towards the brewery end”
He’s not joking either Bowling towards the piled-up beer crates which often add a splash of colour to that particular side of the green it is like setting them off down Lockwood Scar It’s a pitfall which even the -knowledgeable fall into and at least one Subscription Cup player has been "nilled” there.
The Lockwood woollen manufacturing firm’s sports club who had previously played for a season at Lockwood Liberal Club got their new green as a result of former secretary Stanley Clayton having a lunch-time drink and a chat with a brewery director at the “Ivy” at Crosland Moor “It was absolutely a shambles when we took over” he said “But the bowling team and the committee worked hard and voluntarily to get- everything all right” Money flowed in from ventures like concerts fashion shows and raffles and a new bar and pavilion is a testimony the success of their efforts.
The club brightened the start of last season for many people when they ran a sponsored mixed doubles event it attracted about 150 entries and was eventually won by John and Sue Daykin and there was considerable disappointment when they found that it would not be run this year Gledhills-have also met with success on the playing field They run two teams in the Mirfield League two sides in the Huddersfield Works League and they have also a couple of women’s teams who have been on the winning track.
The Works League “A” side have covered themselves with distinction in the past five years by soaring from Division X to Division V in that time and last year the women’s team won the Works League Championship and gained promotion from Section “C” to Section “B” in the Huddersfield Ladies League The green which will accommodate the other half of the sixty-four bowlers who qualified for the middle stages of the Bass North is Almondbury Conservative Club Both Gledhills and Almondbury have sheltered greens and if the weather turns out all right tomorrow it could be “sun-trap” Sunday for bowlers and spectators.
There were nearly 400 bowlers in this competition which has a first prize of £150 and the destination of that money will be known when the final is bowled at Lindley Liberal Club on Sunday June 1 There are five scratch men still left in Jack Horsfield (the winner when the competition was first played two years ago) Gordon Cowgill, John Daykin, Bryan Armi-tage and Gordon Halstead And lurking ominously on the one mark is David Jenkinson the man who has nearly won enough money from brewery-sponsored competitions to set up his own pub.
Jenky” has twice collected the first prize of £150 in the Webster’s Brewery Northern Counties Open Handicap at Far-town and he was also the star turn at Failsworth in 1972 when he won the top prize of £150 put up by the Star Brewery Blackburn in the floodlight competition at the Star Inn at Failsworth But the back markers aren’t likely to have it all their own way in this event which is popular because so many have so much start.
Handicaps can be great levellers “Keep me away from a man with six or seven start who gets a pair at the first end” said one the scratch men to me when he was making inquiries about last Saturday’s qualifiers “When that happens it’s uphill all the way” And a shining example of the glorious uncertainty that is bowling came at Crosland Moor Liberal Club in the preliminary rounds British Crown Green Merit winner Fred Whitehead (HC and AC) had to give six start to Norman Raper (Shepley) But with pair after pair the opening ends he scored twelve without reply and it looked a world cruise to a weekend at Blackpool that he was on his way to the next round But not so Raper came back in fine style and with the card at 20— 20’won with the last wood of the game to go forward-into the internediate stages
BRIAN STARKEY of Springwood will be chasing a first prize of £50 in the Spen Victoria Cricket Athletic and Bowling Club Spring Handicap tomorrow with borrowed woods ' “I had mint stolen from outside the Spen dub” he said “I’d been playing in a game in Huddersfield and then I went over to watch the games at Spen I left them by the side of a wall as I have done before and when weftt for them they’d gone “Later on a man phoned me to say my block had been found in Muffitt Lane about a mile and a half from the club I went over on Sunday to have a look round the spot where it was discovered but I couldn’t find the woods “Anyway Peter Leah has lent me his wood s and I have had some practice with them tut it’s not like bowling with your own is it?”
There are only two Huddersfield players the other is John Greensmith of Dalton in the last sixteen of this event in which virtually all the star names have been eclipsed during the past four Sundays The man who looks to be in the favourite’s chair for the final day is Yorkshire county and Mirfield Old Bank bowler Bernie Warr who is back-marker on the programme with only two start
The opening stages of the Yorkshire Merit will be played next Saturday and there are 254 Huddersfield bowlers taking part This means that Huddersfield have been allotted eleven of the thirty-two places on tM final at Dodworth Welfare on Spring Bank Holiday Tuesday Consequently eleven greens will be in use for the opening rounds in this district The selection of the greens and the draw will be made at a meeting of the Huddersfield Association on Monday.
CHESHIRE five times winners and once runners-up in the Crosfield Cup in the last eight yeajs got off to a good start in this year’s inter-county competition with a seventeen-point win over Yorkshire on Sun-day Yorkshire’s away did well to contain Cheshire home men to twenty-one at Crewe the home ride could only manage to finish four in front at Meltham With a deficit less a point a man in the twenty-four games which were played the match it just shows how vital every point be when 'it comes to the final reckoning.
Still on the go as Huddersfield RUFC