Forty years on and no postponements! THE Griffin Bowling Club are celebrating their 40th anniversary this weekend. Here, Examiner Sports Editor MEL BOOTH looks at what makes them so special

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), March 27, 2009

Byline: Sports Editor MEL BOOTH

FORTY years of winter sport - and they've never had a postponement!

That's the Griffin Bowling Club at Thornton Lodge, where this weekend they are celebrating four decades of crown green camaraderie and the cream of competition.

They are staging a 40th anniversary competition on Sunday (10.30) to which all former members are invited, and it's sure to evoke memories of some of the great characters in the game.

While the Griffin is a private club - the current 64 members bowl from early October through to April - virtually all the top players from Yorkshire and Lancashire in recent generations have done battle on the testing green.

Indeed, many observers believe that in the halcyon days of the Griffin - in the 1970s and 80s - they could have fielded a team which would have won the County Championship. On top of that, if they'd used the Griffin as their home green, they would have been pretty much invincible.

Many major competition winners have been members since Philip Carter, Clifford Armitage and Jackie Cuerden first came up with the innovative idea of forming the club.

Griffin bowlers have won the Yorkshire Merit 20 times between them while two members - Steven Hirst (son of president and life member Alan) and Chris Squires - have won the All-England title.

And the list of winners of the Examiner Rose Bowl - formerly the top 31-up competition at the Griffin - reads like a Who's Who of bowling in Yorkshire crown green.

The long-established Stones Cup is still played there under the new title of the Bernard Sigsworth Memorial Trophy, while the Griffin Champion of Champions competition is a fitting climax to each season and a fixture programme which has proudly remained intact since Day One.

Gales, rain, snow, fog, ice or darkness - or any combination of those elements - have not been enough to stop competition, and the club famously once used a JCB snow tractor to clear the green so that the Stones Cup could be played in February 1979.

It was reported 'the arena was more like a curling rink than a bowling green' and the headline in the Examiner summed it up succinctly: "A n(ice) one!"

Current secretary Frank Greenwood - who still has member No1 Derek Sykes on his books - explained why the Griffin is such a celebrated club.

"Our members have a special affinity with the Griffin and, while maybe only half of them are what you might call 'regulars' these days, we are healthy and looking to the future," he said.

"It's a proud tradition that we've never had to call off the bowling, even though there have been some pretty atrocious conditions.

"We've obviously had to contend with a lot of snow over the years, but I remember playing one day (it was against Gerald Sykes) when the green was so flooded it was taking us five throws to make a mark and we couldn't find the mat under the water and the mud! We have had some very good days as well, though."

The Griffin have always adopted professional rules, too, rather than the British Crown Green set, and some of those are unique to the club.

Bowlers can have two throws of the jack, for instance, if the first goes off the green, they can call for 'a straw' to measure if there is a particularly close call, or a rope if conditions are so bad that a player doesn't feel they can bowl more than the club's rope length (37 and a half yards).

The hot and high standard of competition has attracted some spirited betting from spectators over the years, but it's the spirit of crown green bowling which still burns bright at the club off Manchester Road.

Great names, competitions and events of the past will be recalled this weekend, and the winner of the 40th anniversary competition will chalk their name into a proud history.

Draw for the 40th Anniversary Competition (Sunday, 10.30, odds in brackets): Preliminary - P Conneely (100) v W Higgins (100), S Hirst (7) v P Sigsworth (2).

First round - JD Wright (33) v D Hartley (66), D Walkden (7) v D Reeves (14), T Holmes (20) v A Crowther (33), B Morley (8) v S Parkin (50), E Haigh (10) v B Tinker (100), H Ellis (80) v M Wood (33), K MIdwood (66) v R Wormald (8), G Sykes (66) v R Sutton (16), P Ramsden (66) v M Higgins (25), RMudd (16) vDScott (12),DRae (100) v A Daykin (6), M Bramall (12) v B Walsh (100), R Mozley (25) v F Greenwood (14), R Whitwam (50) v A Hirst (100), D Beeby (14) v W Dews (20).

CAPTION(S):

YOU WON'T STOP US: a digger clears the green of heavy snow so that bowling can take place in the Stones Cup at the Griffin in 1979; WATER EFFORT: members clear a flooded green so they can bowl