The Club

Frant Bowls Club is a village bowls club maintained as a CASC (Community Amateur Sports Club) by its members. It is easy to find the green by Frant Memorial Hall on the Bells Yew Green Road on the opposite side to the cricket pitch. The post code is TN3 9ED or go to the location page for a map or directions. Or use What3words ///reject.ships.closes

Indoors

There is an associated short mat club which is based in Frant Memorial Hall where roll-ups are held on Tuesdays during the winter season. The short mat club is not playing league matches this season.

2025 Finals

Unlike the 2024 season, last season finished with a good day for finals day.

The 2026 season

This season started as usual with a good turnout for the Spring Working Party.

Membership is stable and the first two roll-ups have been well attended and the Tuesday cup is under way. If anyone is interested in trying bowls at Frant, come along and join us on any Tuesday afternoon from 5pm onwards, or contact using this website for further details.

The 100 club is fully subscribed and the first monthly draw has made four winners happy.

We had our first club event on the 19th April, where 6 pairs played in a round robin format. Lead was changed regularly, and a points system used for scoring - this proved more challenging to master than the bowling!  A close result ensued, with John T and Di on 104 points, Aud and Chris P on 105, and Paul and Chris H victorious on 106.

We have some new fixtures this year, so can look forward to some new competition as well as revisiting our regulars.

The Green

The green has wintered well with the additional swishing paying dividends. The voluntary rota for daily swishing has been well supported with worm casts being kept in check by almost daily application of the dew switches which now wear out at least twice as quickly as they used to!

The recently serviced Allett mower is cutting well and under John T's supervision the green is looking good. The green is ready for our first home match although shrinkage from the recent dry weather has made some slightly lumpy patches. We've already had an away match and so we know that our green has not succumbed as much as some.

Quiz Night

We have our quiz evening on Friday 29th May, so start gathering friends and family together to make up teams. A maximum of 8 per team, but don’t worry if you have less, you can still secure a table.

Barn Dance

A barn dance is on the 4th September, so get your dancing shoes ready, and again bring family and friends for this social gathering.

Tuesday Cup

On Tuesday roll-up evenings, we run a season-long competition for which a cup is awarded to the winner at our awards dinner in November. The rules are such that members can play as many of these games as they wish, with the shots scored by their team in their best 8 games counting to their season total. There is a larger element of luck than is usual in bowls games because teams are drawn randomly from those who want to play each week. The format can be pairs, triples or even rinks on up to three rinks. If we have an odd number of players we can even end up with the dreaded three-against-two arrangement! These rules mean that everyone is required to play in the position drawn and may have the advantage of being teamed up with strong team mates or struggling with weaker bowlers. It evens itself out over the season and as long as enough games are played, the low scores don't count anyway. Good character-building stuff!

This website

The website has been enhanced in several ways of late. As usual this process keeps me busy but usually results in a few glitches before it all works well again.

Competitions

There is now a publicly available function to help arrange bowls competitions. It will tell you how many rounds you need for n-player knockout competitions and how many entrants get a bye in the first round. It will tell you how many matches you need in each group for round-robin competitions and given the number of woods per person and number of ends, all the estimated timings are given.

Registered users (not necessarily club members) can now set up competitions and the site will generate complete match schedules and league tables for round robin competition stages and a draw for knockout stages or complete knockout competitions. These competitions allow results to be entered to maintain league tables and knockout progress.

Notification emails

The emails that are automatically sent from the website to members (and registered users) who have subscribed to them are now in a more aesthetically pleasing form (although work still needs to be done here, I have to admit).

A site for your club

Potentially, all the functions of the website are available to other bowls clubs. Currently only Frant Bowls Club and Frant Short Mat Bowls Club use the site but to set up another club is relatively straightforward. The club colours can be specified and a club administrator must be nominated and a modest fee agreed with the developer. The club administrator can then set up the members, the clubs with whom fixtures are held and those fixture arrangements and regular events. The club's home page can be drafted and configured online and updated as frequently as required. Feel free to ask for a trial.