SLIRB News
A fun Sunday morning
150-year-old Irish game brings people in from all over
ANDY McKEEVER, Staff Writer - Bennington Banner
Article Launched: 05/12/2008 03:03:46 AM EDT
Monday, May 12
CAMBRIDGE, N.Y.
Jeff Maust was one good roll away from setting a new course record when he looked past the sun in his eyes and analyzed the curves
in the road. The road bent slightly to the left and peaked in the middle; the 28-ounce bowl needed to stay slightly left on the road, bounce over the
small hill, roll through the finish line and he would lay claim to the Ashgrove Road best.
He wound up and threw the bowl but it broke quickly to the left and off into the brush. Maust dropped his head, knowing he had opened the door for Dan
Monks to stage a come from behind victory and it was close.
Monks' roll looked perfect as it broke the crest and sped toward the finish line, but it bounced off a stone, hit Jim Sullivan's car and stopped just
short. After a final measurement, Maust claimed Saturday's Irish Road Bowl victory.
"I had to keep it close or they won't invite me anymore," Maust joked after the win.
Irish road bowling is a mix between golf and bocce ball. A section of road is chosen and bowlers roll lead balls through the course. Whoever completes
the course with the fewest rolls wins. In Cambridge, a group of friends, dubbing themselves the State Line Irish Road Bowlers, started playing it every
weekend, and now want to share the little-known game with others.
It began with Jeff Goldstone seeing a documentary of the game. Shortly after, his friend Dan Douglas saw the same the show, and the two knew they had to
play. They found a West Virginia company that sells the bowls and from there it became a yearly series.
"We started talking to friends and ended up with these losers," Goldstone joked. "This is our third season. We play the doughnut calendar."
The group insists that in order to have a good bowl, the right balance of coffee and doughnuts is needed and every Sunday at 9 a.m. meets at King's Donut
cart in downtown Cambridge to decide on a course.
"The most important part is the pastry cart," Monks said. "It gets you into the doughnut zone."
John Mooney said a personal theme song, which he hums before each roll, is also helpful.
After choosing one of three mile-long courses, they head out for two hours of fierce competition. The courses, which must be within 10 miles of the cart,
stretch through back roads, on both dirt and pavement, with a minimal amount of traffic.
"Cambridge roads are perfect for it," Maust said. "We're always on the lookout for a good lane."
The game is sometimes disrupted by passing cars. While one person bowls, the others stand guard, shouting out when a car and chasing bowls that go off
the road. On any Sunday, these men can be seen fishing the bowls out of brooks and streams or brush along the roads.
Douglas said it's always a different group of people consisting on average of about four or five, all with unique nicknames, who play the Sunday game.
If there are a lot of people, they break into teams, he said.
"It's really just a chance to get out. When you live in a place this beautiful, it's nice to get out there and enjoy it," Douglas said. "It's also a
good way to blow off some steam, throwing a two-pound ball down the road."
After three years of playing the courses, the neighbors have gotten to know them and the group wants to share the game they've all gotten engaged in.
The group is now hoping to develop a Web site, www.slirb.com, to show others.
The games dates back to pre-Civil War days when Irish soldiers rolled cannonballs down the street to keep themselves occupied, according to Sullivan. It
has seen popularity in Ireland and England and recent clubs have struck up in Boston, West Virginia, Canada, New Zealand and now Cambridge.
"It's getting out there with your friends," Maust said.
Faugh a Bollach! (Clear the Way!)
Irish Road Bowling: Southern Washington County’s Latest Sports Craze?
by Evan Lawrence, Main Street News
It’s a summer morning in the village, and a crowd has collected at the Kings’ bakery wagon on West Main Street. Among them are nine men for whom this Sunday morning ritual is a prelude to something else: In a short time, they’ll be tossing and chasing iron balls down a rural road, keeping alive the traditional Irish sport of road bowling.
Jeff Goldstone, the sport’s local promoter, explains that he first heard of the obscure game on a TV travelogue about 10 years ago. Last year he went online and found a source of balls (or bowls), recruited some friends, and started playing locally on Sunday mornings.
Bags of pastries in hand, the nine players, plus a reporter and photographer, troop to Goldstone’s house nearby for coffee and to pick up the balls. Player Jason Dolmetsch arrives with his dog Hieka, a lithe and eager German shepherd.
“We spend a lot of time looking for the ball,” Goldstone explains. “Having a lot of people who can see where it went off the road is good.” Hieka’s job is to nose it out when they fail.
The balls are nestled in a wooden box. They’re made of cast iron, 2.25 inches in diameter and 28 ounces apiece. Goldstone paints them each week in different colors. The players stuff dollar bills into an empty compartment to cover the cost of replacement balls. Goldstone says they have to be ordered from a supplier in Washington, DC, who charges $12 each.
The group drives to a quiet stretch of paved road well outside the village, one of two roads on which they usually play. The course begins where the pavement ends, and slopes gently downhill for 1.1 miles.
The blacktop on the road is new and smooth, applied this past spring. “They never should have paved this road,” Goldstone mourns. “Before, if you won, it was luck. Now you need skill.”
The players divide themselves into four teams of two and one solo. One at a time, the players who are throwing run up to the start of the pavement and cast their team’s ball underhand down the road. The balls bounce and clatter before, inevitably, rolling off the crown and onto the shoulder. Spotters note where the ball stops, not where it goes off the road, and mark the corresponding place on the road in colored chalk. Each cast is identified with the number of the throw and the initials of the teammates. The goal, Goldstone explains, is to cover the distance in the least number of throws. If two teams end with the same number, they throw once more, and the longest roll wins.
The game progresses quickly down the road, punctuated by the occasional cry of “Car!” “This is the perfect amount of Sunday exercise,” notes player John Cummings, who was one of Goldstone’s first recruits. “It’s not too much.”
Players have to stay alert. No one’s ever been seriously injured by a ball at their games, Goldstone says, but being struck by the iron projectiles hurts. Despite their colors, it’s also easy to lose balls in the underbrush. Hieka is frequently called over to locate balls that have been swallowed by tall grass or bushes.
One ball bounces off the road’s shoulder and down a bank, under an old fence of sheep wire and barbed wire, and into a tangle of multiflora rose. “I’m waiting for the day when we find the wrong ball,” one player comments during the fruitless search. Even Hieka gives up on penetrating the thorny tangle, and the gold ball is abandoned.
There are other hazards.
“Poison ivy is absolutely a part of the game,” Goldstone says.
Dolmetsch throws a ball that runs straight down the road, then, incredibly, follows the crown around the curve until it eventually rolls off. It’s the longest throw of the day.
As it happens, the town road crew ended the new pavement just at the 1.1-mile mark. But the line slants across the road. Players may have to cover a few feet less depending on whether their last cast goes down the right side of the road or the left. Two teams end with a low score of 24. The course record is 21, Goldstone remarked. He and Dolmetsch win on the roll-off, but it’s clear that the game is less about winning than it is about the fun of throwing and chasing balls down a country road.
Stan Miller, a former roommate of player Dan Douglas, has come from Quincy, MA, with two young friends. This is his first time playing. “It sounds ridiculous, but it’s fun,” he admits.
The origins of Irish road bowling, also called long bullets, are obscure. The game appears to have begun in Scotland and northern England and arrived in Ireland with weavers from those regions. It can be traced in Ireland to the late 17th or early 18th century, according to Long Bullets: a history of road bowling in Ireland, by Fintan Lane. Requiring no greens fees or court rentals, special attire, or equipment beyond a stone or iron ball, it was a popular working-class sport throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Important matches often attracted hundreds of spectators, with large sums wagered. However, authorities frowned on games that blocked the public highways, and attempted to discourage it. Today it survives primarily in Counties Cork and Armagh. A national organization, Ból Chumann na hÉireann, oversees and promotes the sport in Ireland.
Goldstone knows of only one organized group in this country, the club in West Virginia that he originally contacted for information. However, he’s aware of players who meet regularly in Brattleboro, VT, Boston, and New York City.
“Our question is, why hasn’t this taken off as a major American sport?” he muses. “All you need is an iron ball… and a dog.”
And a quiet country road.
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