In October, 2000, Centre Manager Maureen Collins (Email: tiverton_pool_&_ fitness@birmingham.gov.uk was approached by Coach Maurice Price with the ‘inspired’ idea of starting a section for youngsters. From that meeting, the ‘Stirchley Junior’ section was born. This is managed and run by City Council staff separately to CBIBC. (City of Birmingham Indoor Bowls Club) which has an independent committee to manage club business and organise Leagues and Competitions from the Council’s Leisure Services facility at Stirchley. As mentioned elsewhere, at first Stirchley Juniors consisted of one coach and one junior Gareth Evans. However, before too long we had a handful of children being coached on Monday afternoons at 1615 hours.

We are pleased to say that over the last three to four years we have improved steadily and can now be considered to be a reasonably progressive club. Ideas are one thing, but carrying them out is quite another. However, one thing we did which helped us enormously was when Maureen, in 2001, 'took the plunge and purchased 20 blue shirts with a club monogram printed on, at the special price of £4 each. At that time we were the only junior club in Warwickshire with coloured shirts...and there were in fact, a few 'raised eyebrows'. However these were very popular with the junior's and gave us a boost at the right time.

We started our first competitions and leagues in our second season 2001/2...which comprised a singles league, a singles knockout and an Australian Pairs and of course, an award for the most improved player. All of the competitions consisted of just four games...but it was still very meaningful to parents and junior's. We have now progressed to a season long singles league of 18 games each player, as well as the very enjoyable Open Pairs and Knockout Open Singles and Knockout Open Novice Singles...plus we also play the very popular Target Bowls and Australian Pairs competitions. (See our Honour's Board below). We are planning three leagues for 2004-5 season.

Right from the very beginning we introduced the concept of a 'skills regime', by awarding a certificate to the junior's when they passed their first skills test. Obviously, this first test was 'fine tuned' to ensure that all gained their first precious 'Introduction to Bowls' Certificate. What happens now is that when youngsters enrol on their first 12 week coaching course it is explained that we issue six categories of certificates, but that all junior's will gain their first ‘Introduction to Bowls’ certificate when they complete their initial 12 week course. The remaining certificates (‘Junior One‘ to ‘Junior Five’) are all strictly based on the the English Bowls Coaching Scheme ‘standard skills exercises’ with progressively tighter standards, up to the levels carried out at the Regional Schools of Excellence.

We regard skill tests as indispensable, both as a measure of progress and because they are so very popular with the junior's themselves.They love them, although we have come across some junior's, around the 17/18 years age group, who seemingly cool off. We feel that there maybe a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that the youngsters coming through, as you all know, are really very good indeed and for some reason they tend to beat the older player. This does not go down too well.

From the results and experience gained since we started, we know what standards (and they are improving) -and the actual measurements- and therefore we can identify the areas needed for the targeted coaching of the individual from a very early stage.

We feel a regular skills test for each individual, affords both a basis for assessment/measurement and a basis to progressively, over time, harness the full available potential. For the junior's it is a good motivator as well, because they wish to master the tighter measurements, and compete against their colleagues, as they progress up to Junior Certificate Five.

The skills certificate test is normally taken each season, but we have had several occasions when we have had to do it more often, due to some junior's progressing quicker than average. This regular testing plus 'a variety of' competitive bowls seems to work very well with our junior's, as they do like doing different activities.

The players elect a Captain (who is invited to committee meetings), and we have the usual awards such as ‘most improved player’ etc.-not forgetting that award for ‘special effort’ etc. Also, at the Annual Presentation we have a mini AGM and ask youngsters and parents to voice any concerns, criticisms and suggestions. Nothing exceptional there you may (quite rightly) say ... certainly most clubs would wish to do all of that, but as far as we are concerned, the thing that we noticed at those meetings was the junior's requested more competitions. The junior's absolutely love playing 'a wide variety' of competitions, and we feel that this has been key to our growth. Certainly, as we have introduced different competitions 'with more variety', so the interest has grown with it. We are on the lookout for more variety...if you have any ideas, we would be grateful if you would get in touch.

Unfortunately, our progress has been 'stunted' somewhat due to our suffering almost zero financial help, and certainly no sponsorship as such. So, once again, a 'great big thank you' to Maureen from Leisure Point (Birmingham's Leisure Services) and also her support staff, Mollie, Pauline and Joyce, who all, amongst many other duties, achieved great things for the Junior's during the last few years including managing to raise some money to obtain trophies for all of our competitions.

Similarly, please note that we also owe a further 'great big thank you' to all of our Coaches, who are continually much out of pocket... something we need to address this season. It is no longer appropriate for our coaches to continually fund expenses, although no doubt, they will continue to contribute in different ways. Ideally, we would like to obtain a form of funding or sponsorship (possibly a small 'one off' club grant) to help cover some of this problem. In the meantime we will continue on our own as we have done until now, but it may be that the only solution is for the parents and junior's to dig a bit deeper and take on a few more expenses ...at least everyone can now see where we are going.

On a slightly different note, we are grateful that the Child Protection Act came into being. We feel that by not being picky, but by directly taking on board the 'spirit of the Act' and its main aims, we were able to feel much more confident in what we were doing. Certainly, we would advise that clubs starting out, should embrace the aims of the Child Protection Act. Looking back to when we started, the individuals who continually 'knocked' the act have very little to say these days. Regardless of what others may say, we remain convinced that Child Protection legislation has been a big help to us, enabling us to evolve in a much more structured way than perhaps otherwise would have been the case. More information and other links, can be found at our CHILD PROTECTION PAGEThe Churches' Child Protection Advisory Service

The 24 Junior’s that we have are of varied ability and ages but we now have the basis of an excellent junior side who have already played one 3 rink friendly match away at Rugby, winning by 2 shots. If there is anyone out there who would like to play us (home OR away) we are looking for games. (Rugby Junior's are like minded and, when we played them recently, it was suggested that it would be a good idea, that if the occasion arose,  we would team up with a view to playing any 6 rink match that is offered -we readily agreed...and this would seem like a useful way for any club to start having some 4-5-6 rink matches).

When ready, our junior’s are progressed through the system to club and county level and three have represented Warwickshire County at U25 Inter County level and several have played for the County at friendly U18 level. Numerous junior's also regularly play for the Club in week-end friendly matches and also in the Club adult leagues and competitions - performing with great credit ALL ROUND... in fact two of our Junior's reached Finals Day and were runners up in the Clubs ‘Novice Pairs’ 2004. Also, worth noting is that we finished as creditable runners-up (considering that we played two of our three games away from home) in the Inaugural Warwickshire Junior County Triples league -which is played at venue's throughout the County. We are also very pleased that three of our junior’s have managed to qualify for the Regional School of Excellence in 2004. On the down side, we have not yet reached the required standard to 'break into' the inter club representative matches such as the Denney Cup, Yetton and Warwick etc. but, hopefully, this will happen before too long.

We have just entered seven of our bowler's in the U25’s National Singles competition and as this is our first time for this competition, we will have to wait to see how they do. We are very proud of our flourishing side and hope that they continue to gain enjoyment and success from their bowls and that the section continues to grow.

Certainly, apart from the occasional club member (who we still come across here and there) the Junior's are very warmly welcomed wherever they go.

It must be said also, that what has been achieved so far, is down to the sheer hard work and dedication of the management, staff and Coaches, all working together. At Stirchley, we have two appointed Helpers, five EBCS Level 2 Coaches, all having attended (variously between 1 and 3) ‘Child Protection’ courses and (in our case anyway) all have to be Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) approved, to comply with Birmingham Council policy and to follow the guidance of our own NGB's. We have not found any particular problems except perhaps that we have needed to introduce a number of new forms. Parents like to see all the procedures required by legislation being implemented and, in fact, we are now very pleased indeed that we have them in place and working well. On the whole the law is commonsense and good practice anyway, but when planning anything (as always), careful forethought is the key.

Still talking about what has been achieved we should not forget, for one moment, that this could not have happened without the parents and grand parents, support staff – and indeed the youngsters themselves, who have shown admirable commitment throughout. We will always need parents support if we are going to succeed. We will need parents even more in the near future. Parents are indispensable to a successful junior outfit. It is worth mentioning here that although we are based in an inner city area the parents have been superb throughout. Long may this continue.

Just a quick mention here on coaching fees, as this is covered in detail elsewhere. We charge £12 for a course of 12 lessons each lasting 2 hours. These charges include the hire of both bowls and shoes where needed. When playing in leagues, competitions or roll-ups, green fees for Junior's are £1 for a 2 hour session. We believe that this is a very good basis for further progress and we hope that Stirchley will continue to go from strength to strength.

This 'Stirchley Junior's' web site has been produced for many reasons...not least of which is to publicise and raise the profile of the section, report news and raise discussion points. There was another reason and that was the rather lack-lustre Birmingham Leisure Services indoor bowls web page http://www.leisure.birmingham.gov.uk/ (find sites, maps, leisure card, full list of charges) which although having a 'hotspot' (in the main sites directory) to Tiverton and then Stirchley Bowls Community and Leisure Centre...nothing on the single page there (of minimal text) says or does anything for bowls at all. Certainly there is nothing about our fair city's own 'Stirchley Junior's' or 'coaching', no photographs, no online booking facilities, little or no text etc...nothing except inexplicit info on a plain page, just basically saying the word 'Bowls'.

So we set out to do something ourselves...to say who we are and what we do...hence this web site...which we envisage running hand in hand and complimentary to the Birmingham web site, with (we hope) links to the Leisure Services web page.

However, it seems that the age of miracles is not yet past,(even the walls have ears) because as of to-day (25.06.04) -just as we are going on line, the Leisure Services site has been updated and nicely improved -but I'm afraid still doing very little for bowls - but Leisure Services deserve our thanks and congratulations for doing this... although more remains to be done.

The web page concerned has a small photograph and some basic information, but is nowhere near (but getting there?) with say Leeds, Nottingham, Torquay, Chippenham, Darlington, Welwyn Garden, and seemingly, all of Essex, and many others...in fact there are quite a number of good bowls sites about, which we will aim to emulate in due course. Anyway, 'nice one Brum'.

However, a plea from the beleaguered bowls fraternity here...please, can we now get a mention in terms of real publicity. Apart from a url link to and from the 'main' Birmingham Council web site (please) could Birmingham also have a look at the main site to see if a slogan such as "give bowls a try" could be given prominence. That would be really helpful. It is disheartening for bowls at the moment because if you looked at the whole site it mentions every sport you could think of...from volley ball to baseball...but no meaningful mention of bowls...only the word itself.

So, staying with this point, please, is there any chance of some quality publicity? An obvious and prime first candidate is your own newspaper Voice? We (and this very much involved our Manager Maureen from Leisure Point as well) have tried (very, very hard) but to no avail. We had a big story...we had the junior's story...photographs and quality personal interviews happened, but no publicity. Why is this? The junior's are a City project, as is the indoor bowls centre itself!

There are other areas that could be looked at. For instance, large amounts of publicity and leafleting are supplied for Strikes. As a suggestion -and as Strikes takes place at the indoor bowls centre anyway (in the next room), can we perhaps be included at the same time? I would think our City Team could do this if allowed. Another one is... Can we be included in 'mail-outs'? I don't know... but other sports have been...we have tried to get involved...again to no avail. It seems to make good sense to pool resources...particularly with bowls at the moment, because all of us involved wish to turn the sport around...and we can do it ...but we need that little bit of help and guidance from the City professionals as to the best way forward. Hopefully we can get this guidance for bowls, but we wait to see...because sometimes it has seemed to us, that the City only major on main sports such as fooball etc. However, there is a feeling in the air at Stirchley that things are perhaps changing, and that maybe we can get our sport promoted on a more equitable basis in the future.

So, summing up, can we please have our sport promoted more regularly and on a more equitable footing...perhaps sharing a leaflet with football and swimming etc? The improved Birmingham web site is appreciated, but without a proper share of other publicity, this may be seen as purely a gesture.

Bowls is a tremendous 'ALL YEAR ROUND' sport for all ages, and abilities, with full gender and age equivelence, and also includes excellent provision for wheelchair bowler's and partly sighted persons. Have you seen people with no hands bowl with their feet...or perhaps an arm or hand, with considerable disability, which is used to send a bowl out with tremendous accuracy ...in international's.

Bowls is truly a sport that could be promoted with great pride -on a 'flagship' basis- both for indoor and outdoor...truly an all the year round sport for everyone.
Sadly, promotion is the one thing that bowls does not get because of the 'trendies' in the media and elsewhere who decide otherwise... often giving 'a push' for their own particular sport instead. The 'trendies who promulgate and exacerbate false perceptions about the game, have done enormous damage. Shame on them! ...but, despite this negativity all around us, we are still here. The sport has the highest participation rate... behind only football and fishing. C'mon Birmingham, give us a break. Please?

Bowls is a sport which carries many false perception's, often promulgated by the media. It is an official fact that it has an extremely high participation rate, being beaten only by football and fishing (official Government Household Survey stats) therefore, it is only fair and proper to include us up there with other sports. Also, bowler's pay the Council Tax -in fact particularly bowler's... most of whom have done so for the whole of their life time...unlike a lot of other sporting recipients of council tax.

Unfortunately, despite Herculean efforts over many years by our 'great and good', nothing seems to happen with our Council. It is a tale of lost opportunities for Birmingham, both with our once wonderful outdoor greens and our only (a converted warehouse) indoor centre.

The City have failed to promote this sport for many, many years and therefore, other small (thrusting) towns have left us lagging far behind. Good luck to them...their townfolk are having a great time.

See our 'NEWS' page for any developments from the Council.

Finally, having got the 'minus side' off our chest, we are fairly sure that there is a 'plus' side to come, with plenty of good news ahead, and we hope to have any news posted on our 'NEWS' page in due course. We shall certainly be keeping up the Stirchley Junior web site, and as this can now (hopefully) also be accessed from Birmingham's Leisure services web page, we anticipate that we will have more readers visiting the site.

Superb!

There is one thing with which we have had very great difficulty -and that is getting publicity in the local press/media. Traveling around on bowls tours and other matters, we are very envious indeed of the media coverage we see elsewhere in some parts of the country. We believe publicity is very important-and we intend to keep on trying to achieve the higher profile that bowls, so richly, deserves. If you can get the support of the press, you are halfway there.

In Birmingham, it is very hard to get any publicity whatsoever.We have tried very hard with our main paper, and we still hope that someone there will take an interest in the sport, but nothing so far...the local press in particular seem to be impervious to any approaches from our 'great and good' and this over very many years indeed...it is not new.  

We inadvertently came across a crown green bowls league web site and their newsletter 'Heart to Heart'. Their Publicity Officer of 4 years standing, absolutely slated the major evening paper unmercifully. It was written in very moderate tones and is well worth a read. Their URL is 'heartofengland.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/newsletter.htm' It illustrates perfectly the situation we are encountering twelve months later. We must and will keep trying... because we recognise the great contribution and help that the press can give to kindle our hopes for junior's in our area, to match those of other areas. It seems that where the game of bowls is properly and fairly reported, membership's are very healthy. There has to be a connection.

Note: With regard to local leagues, the crown green game has loads of web sites full of information and updated results. I think Nationally both codes are about on a par, but locally, crown is well ahead of us with web sites and all sorts of good information. We here believe ours is the better all round game but we should be addressing this...let us get on line and address this imbalance. Surely, there are a sufficient number of us with the time to do this and get our sport and our clubs publicised.

We would like to suggest that you consider the following as a future scenario. We have the feeling that perhaps press publicity will only improve -if and when we get some properly structured, age based, County (and Inter-County) leagues actually up and running. Although, from time to time, we do have the odd 'something' that would interest the press, it is only literally that 'an odd occasion'. Our dealings with the press so far seem to indicate that if we had something that was on a more regular and structured basis, it would be easier to gain the interest of sports writers.

To those amongst us who doubt this, the press have told us that 'local' leagues, good cup competitions etc. rather than just mainly friendlies with a scattering of County and International matches (superb as they are for the enthusiast) would be far more likely to be reported. To local reporters the matches we have to offer, locally, are mostly of little interest or are generally happening on someone else's patch and therefore also of very little interest either. Reporters and the press thrive on news, but not stale news, which is often all that we have to offer at grass roots level.

Certainly locally, Crown Green gets reported on radio and in the press, but our game does not get a mention...and you have to ask why this is. Is it the obvious...big money? We think it is more than that. Crown have many leagues -some with many divisions, they have their famed Merit Competitions, they have fiercely competitive County competitions (many competitive youth and senior competitions)... and Crown is far far cheaper to take up than flat. In our case we feel that (in the end) you get what you pay for...good dress code, good club and social life, well organsised games etc...but often (in the beginning) it is the initial startup costs that are the biggest stumbling block.

Generally though it is leagues and regular offerings that the press will accept and our offering here in Birmingham is a low profile 'crumbling' league of 'double rink' matches! Is there a lesson there for us level green enthusiasts? Where our sport has excellent structured leagues (Yes, age based, County/Inter-County/Area, Ladies etc) in place, the press will generally be pleased to give at least some coverage!

Talking recently to an extremely high official at the Football Association (who themselves have not always had the easiest of relations with the press) this official stressed "We always try to work with the press and TV. We ensure that we give them what they want, because at the end of the day, they have a job to do and if we make it easy for them, they will respond. "Why do we do this.. BECAUSE WE NEED THEM TOO,.. WE NEED EACH OTHER". The words of a realist surely.
This person does not love or admire certain sections of the press or sometimes the particular reporter involved either, but it shows a recognition of the necessity for a professional relationship.

Some amongst us are not interested in press publicity we know, but we would say that it is reasonable to assume that the majority do share the recognition of the role that the press(and other media) could and should play, to give the game a welcome boost of publicity. Firstly though, there has to be something to interest the media...and this is the mountain we need to climb, and quickly too.

Let us hope that one day we get the opportunity to work with the press for the mutual benefit of our sport.

We often have good newsworthy stories to tell and if anyone can help with publicity in the Birmingham area, please make contact urgently. We could certainly do with some help and advice on this important matter.

Here is our honours board recording the juniors achievements since 2000/01 to the present.