At its September meeting, the Board congratulated our Performance team on its incredible success during the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. With 21 individual athlete medals won in seven of the 11 events it was the most successful Commonwealth Games for England to date.
Performance Director, John McGuinness, was in attendance for part of the meeting to provide an in-depth review to the Board. There were six aspirations outlined to Sport England prior to the event on which Bowls England had over-delivered:
• We will showcase our sport and our inspirational athletes.
• We are proud of bowls’ authenticity as an accessible, inclusive sport.
• We want and need to be working truly in collaboration with our partners.
• Our target is to have best medal success since Manchester 2002
• We plan to have the best prepared team we’ve ever had
• It’s critical our gains ahead of Birmingham 2022 build the foundations for future success.
Discussions took place on the future performance programmes, with a Performance Summit attended by International Players and Key Stakeholders to take place in November with the aim to establishing a performance pathway strategy.
In addition, the Bowls England Board reflected on the 2021/22 operational objectives in line with the Strategy and Chief Executive Jon Cockcroft presented the 2022/23 operational plan.
This review included a discussion on the new initiatives launched this year. With 109 clubs now registered on the PlayBowls Platform and 60 clubs signed up for Bowls Bash, our sport has opened its doors to a new demographic of participants wanting to experience bowls on a casual basis.
In addition, these initiatives aim to provide our clubs with a supplementary income stream. The importance of embedding these projects during the upcoming season was highlighted, including education sessions for clubs and counties who wish to champion the initiatives. Click here to view how Bowls Bash can benefit your club.
The 2022/23 Operational Plan and Budget includes new initiatives such as performance strategy, affiliation review and competition strategy, accelerating the work of the Governance Working Party, Disciplinary Working Party and MAR alongside business-as-usual work streams such as competition management, club services and communications.
A commitment was made by the Board to review the affiliation package, with a working party being established with the aim of presenting an initial report to the Counties Conference.
The Presidential team had approached the Board and asked them to review the size of the Presidential team and the Presidential uniform. In order to reduce the time commitment and the financial pressures of joining the team, the President had suggested reducing the team to three members, removing the position of Past President.
The Board supported the suggestion in principle, and asked the Governance Working Party to include the suggestion within its review. In addition, the Presidential Team felt a more modern approach should be adopted in regards to their apparel. The ideas of the Presidential Team have been included in the apparel tender.
Other discussions included Regional Finals, The Bowls Development Alliance Community Activator Work, Board Skills Matrix and County Buddy Update. In addition, to standing items such as the Management Accounts and Risk Register. The full minutes can be found by clicking here.