Invitation Day 18/08/2024

This year saw our most successful invitation day in the club’s history, with a full house of 24 teams taking part plus spectators.  It was a squeeze at times, but the atmosphere was warm, friendly and welcoming accompanied by perfect weather conditions.

Teams arriving early were able to pre-book a breakfast of sausage in a roll along with a hot drink, to ensure they had the strength for the long day of bowling ahead.  Play got underway at 10am and each team played 2 games consisting of 6 ends against randomly selected opponents, before being fed a delicious ploughman’s lunch by our hard-working social team.  After a well-earned rest a further 2 games were played to bring the day to its conclusion around 5.30pm. 

Congratulations go out to our 3 finalists, who strangely all began with a H, and of course, also extended to all the other teams who competed in this fantastic day of bowling!

1st = Hellingly aka “Triple Trouble”;

2nd = Hampden Park aka “Right Said Fred” (for the 2nd year in a row);

3rd = Horam aka “Holding 3”

Not only did the finalists received their prize money, but also a goody bag supplied by our sponsor for the day, Abbotts Wood Manor Care Home.  Many thanks to them for their continued support of our club.  

Throughout the day refreshments and cake (hand baked by our own star bakers) were provided as well as something stronger from our dedicated bar team.  All this along with great prizes to be won at both our Raffle and Alzheimer's stalls, which were both very well attended and raised a lot of money between them.

Events such as this take a lot of organising and without our wonderful team of helpers, who got on with their tasks and worked hard into making it a very special day for the players and visitors, wouldnt be possible.  Therefore the Committee's thanks and gratitude go out to all our members, who in their own way, helped make the day PERFECT.  

Since then we have received many compliments on the food, how well the event had been organised, as well as how helpful everyone was.  Below are few of the comments received:-

 

"On behalf of the Goffers team from Gildredge Park Bowls Club we would like to thank you and all at the club for a wonderful day last Sunday. I hope you will invite us to enter next year."

"I wanted to write to say on behalf of Staplecross Trio we all enjoyed your invitation day very much.  It was a great, well-run event and, believe it or not, I caught up with a few people I have either met through playing County/Bowls England games this year as well as people I know from Short Mat games through the winter.  All in all, we found it so pleasurable and so I felt it was only fitting to write and say well done to you and all the guys/gals at Hailsham for putting on such a splendid tournament.  One last thing, how do we get to play next year, assuming that is possible?  As you can see, we were so impressed we are already talking about next year!"