Bowls: Aussie bowlers need to cut the apron strings

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Bowls: Aussie bowlers need to cut the apron strings

By Sharon Mathieson

MANCHESTER, July 31 AAP - Australia's lawn bowlers need to cut the apron strings andhead to Europe more if they're to be dominant on the international scene.

Despite being ranked among the top bowling nations in the world, Australia often strugglesoff its home turf.

England's wet, uneven and slow greens have proven a graveyard for some fancied Australianbowlers at the Commonwealth Games, with the men's and women's fours teams failing to makeit past their group stage.

And the men's pairs team only managed to scrape into the quarter-finals when they beatSouth Africa 14-11 after allowing themselves to fall into a must-win situation.

There's a simple explanation for Australia's mixed performances - they have it too easy.

"Australians play on billiard table sort of greens and you can miss your grass linein Australia by a couple of inches or so and still be a very good bowl," said Australianwomen's coach and former gold medallist Robbie Dobbins.

"But on the unevenness of the greens over here, if you miss your grass by two inchesyou can be four feet away."

It's all well and good when Australians play their international opponents at homeor indoors but as soon as they get out of their comfort zone they struggle.

"I don't know of any bowling green in Australia that's as bad as these, as far as levelis concerned," Dobbins said.

"Our only excuse at this point in time is that we don't have greens of the unevennessand unlevelness of these in Australia.

"But having said that, there's no excuse. They can play so there's no reason why wecan't play it.

"We're playing world championships in the northern hemisphere so we need to go outof the country to practise because we've got nothing in the country bad enough for usto practise on."

Instead of sending players overseas in the lead up to the Games, Australian officialstried to replicate northern hemisphere conditions at home by making bowlers play on croquetgreens using bowls taken out of buckets of iced water.

Either that didn't work or Australia's croquet greens are superior to any English bowling green.

AAP sm/nh

KEYWORD: GAMES BOWLS AUST