IN THE BEGINNING: Greenkeeper Kieran Aherne and volunteers do the preliminary work (top pictures) and the near finished A green gets an early mow. Right: the modest clubhouse before its substantial extension

Age no barrier to success

MERRIWA BOWLING CLUB has been in existence less than 20 years but has picked up nine Pennant flags in that time - not bad for a club whose members have an average age somewhere in the 70s.

The bowls club is an offshoot of the retirement village and as such inherits players who have had their prime bowling years or, in a few cases, introduces men and women to the sport fairly late in life. Nevertheless it remains a competitive club although the higher echelons of the men’s game are well out of reach.

Five flags have been won by the men’s section - the first seven years after starting Pennant bowls in the 1996/97 season. Having waited for that elusive first flag, they won two in the same season, 2003/04 - Division Three Silver and Division Four Purple, both Thursday competitions.

The sudden success coincided with the arrival in the village of Lindsay ‘Joe’ Marsh, who had been playing for 40 years with a host of clubs -­ City Beach, Rockingham and Clairmont. Good enough to be a First Division skip, Lindsay has won 16 titles at Merriwa prior to the 2014/15 season, including the men’s singles six times - five in a row from 2007. His run came to an end in 2012 when beaten in the final by current men’s captain, Bob Gillian.

A radio technician in the air force and later proprietor of a small flying school and local newspaper (the Corridor Courier), Lindsay rates his most difficult final opponent Geoff White, who led for him at Clairmont. Geoff is a resident of the Mindarie retirement village, Harbourside, while other Merriwa bowlers are drawn from the RAAFA estate at Cambrei and the Settlers village, a particularly productive source, and a few from the community at large.

Geoff and Lindsay were part of the only Merriwa Saturday side to collect the Flag - in 2005/06 -along with others still involved today in Grahame Gough (twice singles champion), Gil Barr, Peter Price, Ivor Thomas, Les George, Barry Lague, Doug Leicester and Denis Cockayne.

The following season came another Thursday double, Division Three Purple and Division Four Lime.

Club coach Alan Arter is well placed to judge Merriwa as a bowling club, having played to a high standard in England and then joining Sorrento when he and his wife Hazel arrived in Australia.

‘We are not in the business of actively canvassing for players. Obviously with the age of our players we have people who give up the game or shuffle off the mortal coil but we attract sufficient new players on a regular basis,’ says Alan.

Although Alan had played bowls in England for 16 years he admits that playing the game in Aus came as a real culture shock. ‘Like most players in England I was self taught. When I came to Australia I had coaching at Sorrento and it was like starting all over again. It is so much more professional here’ He now imparts that knowledge to newcomers to the sport at Merriwa along with Ellaine Jopling and Doug Leicester.

‘I think the club is in a good place - financially healthy and with a sustainable membership,’ says Alan. ‘The men’s section will never reach the heights because we just don’t have the strength in depth. We were out of depth last season in Division Two but we will be highly competitive in Division Three and could even win it.’

The women are in a much higher grade of Pennant bowls and were virtually guaranteed to be successful from the moment their section was formed.

Audrey Patterson was a driving force in the early days - and still is. On the verge of moving to the village, Audrey joined Quins Rock in 1996 as Merriwa was not then affiliated to Bowls WA . Audrey’s Quins Rock side went on to win promotion to Division One and then, much to the chagrin of Quinns, ten of the side joined Merriwa the following season even though it meant dropping down to Division Five .

Not surprisingly they swept all before them. Starting in the 1997/98 season, a year after Merriwa had entered a men’s Pennant ide, they won four successive Flags until in 200/01 they reached Division One, where they have been ever since.

Apart from Audrey that 1997/98 flag-winning side included Ann Walsh, the first ladies singles champion, Maila Piirto and Mavis Price - all still playing in Pennants.

Of the 29 women who attended the inaugural ladies annual meeting on May 5, 1997, Audrey is the only one still playing. She started bowling in 1976 at Thornley after giving up tennis and was an ideal person to drive the ladies section forward - a section that now has three teams - in Divisions One, Two and Three, drawing on a membership of around 60.

Audrey was the first club president when Merriwa’s men and women joined forces at the instigation of Lindsay Marsh in 2011 with the support and encouragement of Bowls WA.

Audrey, Lindsay, Christine Peacock, Clive de Ridder and David Jopling spent several months re-writing the club constitution, after the amalgamation had been overwhelmingly approved by members. Basically the constitution was plagiarised from another club but still had to be ratified by RAAFA and Bowls WA,

‘For a small club that doesn’t own anything and doesn’t receive any bar profits we are in a sound financial position,’ said current treasurer Clive de Ridder.

In Bill Morrow’s last report as treasurer in May 2012, assets over liabilities amounted to more than $89,000 and prompted the spending of $14,000 on new chairs and $7,000 on new shirts for every member - almost certainly a unique gesture from a bowls club in WA.

It costs the club $6,500 to play under the auspices of Bowls WA and the groundstaff costs are in excess of $36,000 so the club needs to be resourceful in fund raising since membership fees amount to just $14,500.

Even with the purchase of chairs and shirts the ‘assets over liabilities’ was more than $73,000 according to the latest figures, testimony to the success of all the various club activities.

One feature the club can rightly be proud of is the fish and chip platters provided on men’s Pennant match days - surely the best refreshments on the club circuit.

The platters are funded completely by the men’s section through the match fees on Pennant practice days and a portion of the Pennant day match fees.

Flying the Flags...

2003/04 Division 4 Purple Thursday

Back row (left to right): Norm Sanders, Ivor Thomas, Bert Wright,

George Messer, Brian Hotchin, Lloyd Trotter Front row: Bobby Brennan, George Rundle, John Sheridan, Fred Emmerton, Barry Lague, Barry Whingfield

2003/04 Division Three Silver Thursday

Back row (left to right): Les George, Mitch Brown, Frank Durrant, Keith Aldred, Merv Nash, Glyn Herbert Front row: Hugh Sheridan, Les Wright, Lindsay Marsh, Tom Acton, Frank Pimm, Doug Harris

2005/06 Division Three Silver Saturday

Back row: Grahame Gough, Gil Barr, Peter Price, Ray Spybee, Ivor Thomas, Les George, Randall Harding, Geoff White Front row: Brian Smallwood, Barry Lague, Noel Polain, Doug Leicester, Denis Cockayne, Mick Bassett, Les Wright, Lindsay Marsh

2006/07 Division Three Purple Thursday

Back row: Don Williamson, Grahame Gough, Les George, Bert Muir, Geoff White, Reg Woodhead Front row: Brian Smallwood, George Rundle, Randall Harding, Lindsay Marsh, Gil Barr, Peter Price, Barry Lague

1997/98 Division Five:

Back row: Mavis Price, Ann Williamson, Ann Walsh, Flo Host, Pam Merrick, Jean Crossley, Irene Gatter (President) Front row: Maila Piirto, Audrey Patterson, Janet Close, Rose Koh, Rona Gibbings, Fay Butler

1998/99 Division Four:

Back row: Audrey Patterson, Peg Dyas, Fran Riley, Ann Walsh, Maila Piirto, Rona Gibbings, Pam Merrick Front row: Verna Nichols, Janet Close, Irene Gatter, Jean Crossley, Jean Brown

1999/2000 Division Three:

Back row: Jean Crossley, Ann Walsh, Rona Gibbings, Pam Merrick, Verna Nichols, Ivy-May Wright, Maila Piirto Front row: Janet Close, Jean Brown, Irene Gatter (President), Audrey Patterson, Fran Riley

2000/2001Division Two:

Back row: Maila Piirto, Pam Merrick, Rona Gibbings, Jean Crossley, Janet Close, Joan Marsh Front row: Ann Walsh, Jean Brown, Irene Gatter, Audrey Patterson, Fran Riley, Verna Nichols

2006/07 Division Four Lime Thursday

Ken Perriam, Alan Firth, Bob Mann, Brian O’Shannassy, Greg Davis, John Sheridan

Front row: Fred Emmerton, Colin Ansell, Lloyd Trotter, John Sofoulis, Colin Kingshott, Wally Henry

A hardy annual: greenkeeper Kieran Aherne

Kieran Aherne was the man charged with transforming a bare patch of earth into three immaculate greens in the mid-1990s and he is still in charge today... in every sense of the word.

An Irishman from Limerick, he arrived in Perth in 1971 as a 20-year-old looking for work opportunities.

He had five years of what he describes as ‘unsatisfactory employment’ until getting the chance to to try his hand at greenkeeping at Wanneroo BC - and he has never looked back. After an 18-month learning curve, Kieran joined Nedlands BC as head greenkeeper for five years during which time he gained horticultural and greenkeeping qualifications.

He moved to Wembley BC before joining RAAFA headquarters at Bull Creek in 1986 and when the Merriwa village project was started in 1994 Kieran was handed responsibility for all outdoor activities.

The laying of A green came first, of course, and Kieran remembers having to wheelbarrow 20 cubic metres of sandy loam from the car park with just one helper. It was a week of back-breaking work and the start of a year-long effort, backed up by a handful of residents, to get the site ready for bowls.

Most of the names mentioned in despatches have either died or given up the game but one hardy annual, Lenny Snell, who represented Merriwa in their first Pennants match (against whom he cannot remember), is still a Pennants bowler although well into his nineties.

He recalls that Ben Pritchard, with a background in the building trade, organised the volunteers that included Harold Andrews, Percy Glover, Tom Clarke, Colin Jones, Frank Butler, John Kelly, Herb Williams, Ron Upton, Fred Sheppard, Bill Goddard and John Cook.

On Wednesday September 25, 1996 all the hard work came to fruition with the Opening Day for the 1996/97 season attended by more than 70 people. Paul Filing, Federal Member for Moore, rolled the first bowl and performed the opening ceremony. Among the guests were the Men's and Ladies’ Presidents from Bowls WA, President Eileen Southern form the WA Division of RAAFA, and Squadron Leader Ron Bray, representing the RAAF’s Pearce Airbase.

If the laying of A green was relatively smooth, the same cannot be said for B and C greens. Incredibly the latter was laid while Kieran was on holiday and the problems that followed demanded drastic action. The National Park grass was poisoned and replaced with Santa Anna Couch - a soft, very fine leafed grass. That was 12 years ago and seven years later A green was also changed to Santa Anna, putting it out of action for an entire season.

The problems with B green were far more deep rooted. It failed to drain properly and exploratory tests discovered that tons of vegetation hacked out of the ground had been buried on the site. Again major remedial work was needed.

The cost was prohibitive. To get rid of it in one fell swoop would cost in the region of $21,000 so it was decided to do it in two halves. One side of the green was dug up and the debris piled up on the other side. The exercise was then repeated. It was more time consuming but less costly, although still not cheap at £13,000. B green is now used as a floater to cover when either A or C green is out of circulation.

Kieran’s desire to maintain the integrity of the greens has not always been well received by some club members. He is particularly quick to close the greens after rain.

‘There is nothing more certain to damage a green than to play on it when it’s wet. The surfaces here are true and fast enough but that is not my sole concern,’ says Kieran. ‘They have to look good for the entire community, including those who do not play bowls. There are clubs that have greens shaved bare and they are often in poor condition. I am not prepared to let that happen here.’

Kieran admits that the job can be a worry but he has found ways of unwinding - as a singer and guitarist with a band called Heel n Toes. He has also trodden the boards at the Limelight Theatre, although the acting has taken a back seat of late.

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