It’s the end of the line for Huddersfield’s award-winning indoor bowlers.
Kirklees Council called a meeting with the bowlers and said: “We can do nothing to help, we have no money”.
It means when the current season ends at the end of March, there will be no more competitive indoor bowling in Huddersfield and no more indoor bowling at all once the Southgate centre closes just a few weeks later.
“They are consigning 40 years of history to the scrapheap,” said Damien Talbot, secretary of the Huddersfield Indoor Bowling Club and one of the players who has brought repeated success to the town at local and regional competition.
“They have told us they have no money to find any alternative provision”.
Angry bowlers claim the council have had seven years to come up with another scheme for the bowlers, as the Huddersfield Leisure Centre has been on the cards all that time.
But council officials and councillors decided not to include bowling in the new centre at the 11th hour and have also confirmed plans to demolish alternative facilities at Whitcliffe Mount in Cleckheaton. A plan to incorporate indoor bowling at the crown green bowling “pod” in Leeds Road has also been ruled out.
Clr Jean Calvert chaired the meeting with the bowlers and was joined by Clr Peter O’Neill and the pair told bowlers there was no money in council coffers to fund any alternative to the existing Sports Centre.
The authority have paid a small sum to Rastrick Bowling Club for a feasibility study into a possible four-lane indoor rink there but that is at least two years away at least.
Mr Talbot said: “Unfortunately the meeting confirmed there will no provision for indoor bowlers in Kirklees once the season is over.
“The council, despite numerous promises over the past seven years, have pulled the plug on the sport.
“It was the news we were dreading. It’s a sad day that 40 years of the sport have gone. We have just a few cup competitions and a couple of league games to go and then that’s it.
“We did come up with a business plan to keep the rink at the Sports Centre once the new Leisure Centre opens but Kirklees say it’s a non-starter”.
Fellow bowler Marie Nicholson added: “My own thoughts are that the bowlers and the OWLS groups who use the rinks have had a very raw deal. For the past seven years the council has strung us along with empty promises”.
