Saving the local bowls club

Long before the film Crackerjack popularised the flipper, the venerated sport of lawn bowls has been a staple of Australian life. But for the oldest bowls club in New South Wales, that gentle sound of knocking bowls on the green has come to an end. After almost 150 years, Balmain Bowling Club in Sydney called last drinks over the weekend.Despite their best efforts, the board explained to patrons that it had simply become financially unsustainable to continue trade.It's a familiar tale — researchers from the University of New South Wales crunched the numbers in 2022 and found that Sydney had lost nearly half of its bowls clubs since 1980. So what's the future for these community hubs?