Founded in 2015 with the announcement of funding from the National Lottery to build a new all-weather Bowling Green at North Kildare.
Founding committee – Brian Horn (Chairman), Tom Egan (Treasurer) and the following members – Pat Brady, Gerry Fennell, Gerry Flynn, Dudley Foster, Eric Lipson, Sandra Seery.
While waiting on the building to commence we sorted out the “admin” so that we would be ready to start once the green was completed. We became members of the Bowling League of Ireland and they generously offered us a €20k start up loan to be repaid three years from draw down. We also got funding from our committee to ensure we met the North Kildare criteria for accepting the loan from the Lottery. North Kildare Club has supported North Kildare Bowls very generously.
The Committee at Westmanstown Bowls Club allowed North Kildare to use their Rink in 2016 & 2017 for Training on Friday Nights while we awaited our own Green.
Sod turned in June 2017 and we were finally open for bowling from 2nd September 2017 with an exhibition game from our friends in Westmanstown Bowling Club.
We ran “Come and try out Bowls” events on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings through September and October 2017 and held our first Club meeting on 14th November 2017 with 16 members. Some of our members are “Life” members of North Kildare which means they only pay subs to our section
We got great support from the Westmanstown & BLI regarding coaching and throughout November through to March our members were out playing even when snow threatened play (picture)
Westmanstown had two teams playing in the BLI Winter League using our rink as their “home” base on Saturdays from October to March and trained on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings during that time – at times there were 40-50 people in attendance.
Since we are still an evolving club the BLI have allowed us to enter a mixed team {Male & Female} in Division 6 this year and our first match is on Wednesday 25th April at home so hopefully we’ll get loads of local support.
Training continues on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10:30am and most Sundays at 2pm. Group has really ‘gelled’ through use of Whats app and often a small group will get together for a ‘roll up’ mid-week.
We are hoping to ‘sell-in’ the use of our green to hotels etc as a way of fundraising for future needs.
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