Bowls Club Blues

Since my last post on this subject I decided to bite the bullet and try to find out more information about joining a bowls club...

If you are currently a member of a bowls club, and you are wondering why your club isn't attracting any new members, I would like to ask you the following questions:

1. If someone looks up your club online, do they find any information at all?
2. If someone walks up to your building and through the front door, do they find any information at all?

If you can't answer these questions with a resounding "Yes!  Of course!  Loads of useful information about what our club does, what you can do here and why you should join us - as well as how you can join us." Then you're doing it wrong.

There are no fewer than seven bowls clubs in my town.  When I tried to find information about them online, only two clubs had any online presence at all.  Of those two clubs, only one of them seemed to understand that the website should make the club seem like a nice, welcoming place where you are likely to encounter nice, welcoming people.  That club is situated on the other side of town to where I live.  The other one was closer but, after looking at their website, I actually felt less welcome than I did before I looked at their website.

So I thought to myself:  "What the heck.  Bowls clubs are probably too full of old people to understand all this web stuff anyway.  I will walk into my nearest bowls club and pick up a brochure or something."

My nearest bowls club is the Jubilee Bowling Club.  Having now mentioned the words Jubilee Bowling Club a couple of times in this post, I am creating a situation where I have mentioned the Jubilee Bowling Club online more often than the Jubilee Bowling Club has.  Now, anyone who looks up the Jubilee Bowling Club in Google will find this post long before they find anything the Jubilee Bowls Club actually wants to say about itself.

I don't think this will be a problem, though, because the Jubilee Bowls Club doesn't say anything about itself at all.  Anywhere.  Ever.  I walked up to the front door expecting to have my first question "is the club open?" answered.  Not so much.

There is nothing on the building to state what the opening hours of the club are.  Well, there is the sign that tells me what hours they are licensed to serve alcohol, but nothing to indicate when a visitor might be able to go in and drink one of those alcoholic beverages.  Or, for that matter, whether or not you have to be a member of any description to do so.

There were people walking in and out of the door, though (dressed in their party best, so I'm assuming the hall had been hired for some function), so I walked in to see if they had any information near the door.  I found a notice board full of notices... just none about the club.  I spent a full five minutes looking in vain for a piece of paper that said:  "Hello, welcome to our club.  This is what we do here.  This is what you can do here.  This is why you should stick around or come back later..."

If you have never walked into a bowls club before, the Jubilee Bowling Club does not offer any help at all.

I walked out of the club, none-the-wiser for walking into it.

My second attempt was the Cutheringa Bowls Club.  This one at least had a sign out the front saying "we invite you to play bowls here" (or something similar... actually, it mostly said they had pokies).  However, the Cutheringa Bowls Club has taken the unusual step of giving up its front door.  To enter the club you have to walk around the side and enter something that looks, for all the world, like it's the staff entrance.

It feels like you're trespassing, rather than actually gaining entrance to the club.  If you wanted a sign encouraging you to enter... well you're out of luck.  All you get is a sign asking gentlemen to wear clothes (as opposed to singlets and thongs).  Once again, opening hours are to be guessed (as is whether or not the club sells food, and is therefore a legitimate option for a counter meal on a Saturday night).

Oh, and if I thought the Jubilee Bowls Club was uninformative... they had nothing on Cutheringa.  The Cutheringa Bowls Club happily tells you it only costs $10 to join as a social member.  It just doesn't have any member ship forms or information about membership anywhere where an interested passerby might be able to read it.

I think I would have had to front up to the bar to ask about the club - which is something I wasn't interested in doing, to be frank.  The bar was propping up a handful of boozy blokes who were nursing their packets of cigarettes as though they were on the verge of smoking.  There was some sort of match happening on the lawns - being played by people with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.

I took one look at the bar, and one good long look at the club members, and thought:  "I hardly drink, I don't play pokies and I don't like smokey environments.  Does this place have anything for me at all?"

I couldn't see an answer anywhere, so I left.