“Bowling is bred in our bones and entwined in our lives,” says former Bishop of Cork and Ross Dr John Buckley (85), as he reflects on the game he has played and followed for more than eight decades.
A native of Inchigeelagh in Co Cork, Buckley’s devotion to bowling predated his religious vocation, and indeed it was when he and his classmates were supposed to be receiving religious instruction that he learned the game.
“Our teacher, Master O’Leary, used to take us bowling on the road west of the village during the religion class – so much so that I thought bowling was part of religion. Both boys and girls were involved – we used to compete with other schools in mid-Cork and we won several competitions.”
Buckley’s prowess with the bowl (it rhymes with owl) earned him the sobriquet The Bowling Bishop, and he is an eloquent advocate for the sport, spreading the gospel of bowling.
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Like all great games, bowl playing’s success owes much to its simplicity: two competitors throw a 28oz iron ball, or bowl, along a three kilometre or so stretch of public roadway, and whoever covers the distance from start to finish in the fewest shots wins the contest, called a score.
It all sounds simple, except it isn’t – as former All-Ireland intermediate winner and five-time All-Ireland senior finalist, Geraldine Daly from Caheragh, explains as she watches Brian O’Driscoll from Drimoleague take on Clonakilty’s Alex O’Donovan in the Munster Junior B final in west Cork.
“It’s a power thing – your whole body needs to be in shape, you need strong arms and legs to push out the bowl. Brian O’Driscoll, he isn’t a big man, but it’s about generating speed, and he generates it through the speed and power of his run into the delivery and the speed of his arm swing.”
As O’Driscoll and ciotóg (left-hander) O’Donovan do battle to whoops and cheers along the Enniskeane- Coppeen road in Castletownkinneigh, they, like all 3,000 members of Bol Chumann na hÉireann, are continuing a tradition that goes back at least 300 years.
There is debate as to where and when road bowling began, with Cork-born historian Dr Fintan Lane positing a number of theories in his 2005 book, Long Bullets – A History of Road Bowling in Ireland.
These include that it was an ancient Celtic game; that it was brought in by Dutch soldiers in the army of William of Orange; or that it came in with an influx of British weavers. Lane opts for the last as the most plausible after finding references to road bowling in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
The game was once played in all 32 counties but today is found in the strongholds of Cork and Armagh, with smaller numbers still playing in pockets of Kerry, Limerick, Louth, Mayo, Tyrone, Waterford and Wexford.
There is a notable difference between playing styles, with Cork players throwing the bowl with a windmill-type swing known as ‘hinching’, while Armagh players lob it underarm like a tenpin bowler.
The Cork hinching style, which is also used by players elsewhere in Munster and in Connacht, allows the player to loft the ball high into the air to clear ditches and dykes, while the Armagh players with their lower trajectory are known for being able to put a spin on the bowl to round bends in the road.
The Cork-Armagh rivalry goes back almost 100 years when, in 1928, Cork bowler Timmy Delaney – celebrated in the famous Cork ballad The Boys of Fairhill – travelled north to the Orchard County where he took on Peter ‘The Hammerman’ Donnelly and won in a famed score on the Knappagh Road.
That Cork-Armagh rivalry became even more intense following the establishment of Bol Chumann na hÉireann in west Cork in 1954. And when the great Armagh bowler Danny McPartland travelled south to take on Cork’s finest, Mick Barry from Waterfall, in 1964, they drew a crowd of 15,000 to White’s Cross.
Among them was Buckley, then a year shy of ordination.
“Mick Barry was to bowling what Christy Ring was to hurling,” says Buckley. “He had massive strong wrists, and you wouldn’t see the bowl leaving his hands, it was just a blur, but I remember that day at White’s Cross, he was trailing Danny McPartland coming up to Mary Ann’s pub.
“It’s the Stirrup Bar today but that time it was known as Mary Ann’s and the pub had to be cleared of imbibers so that Barry could loft the bar – and he did, landing it inch perfect on the road, and he got a sustained tumultuous round of applause, but McPartland fought back with a great final shot to win.”
Over the years, changes in Irish society have influenced changes in bowling, with increasing urbanisation forcing many clubs in Cork city to move further out into the countryside, as long-time follower Willie Murphy from Donoughmore in mid-Cork observes.
“Years ago, you had scores on most of the roads leading out of the city, Clogheen and Dublin Hill on the northside, Pouladuff and Lehenaghmore on the southside – you still have bowling out in Curraheen and at the Blackstone Bridge but with more housing on these roads, city clubs are bowling further out now,” he says.
UCC academic and Bol Chumann secretary Séamus Ó Tuama agrees. He says that while many of these arteries in and out of the city are no longer viable because of increasing traffic volumes, growing car ownership means people can travel further to watch scores.
“Back in the day, it you had a score in Curraheen on the western side of the city, nobody from Midleton in east Cork would travel, but today with greater mobility you could have a score in Castletownbere almost at the tip of the Beara Peninsula, and you could have people coming from Youghal,” he says.
Ó Tuama points too to bowling’s popularity among other types of sportspeople – Armagh’s footballer Ethan Rafferty is a fine player, as are Kelly Mallon from Armagh and Juliet Murphy from Cork; Cork hurler Conor Lehane bowled as a young lad, as did Everton centre-half Jake O’Brien, from Youghal.
Among the first women to leave her mark on bowling was Gretta Hegarty, now Gretta Cormican, from Lyre near Clonakilty, the winner of one World title, one European title and seven All-Irelands.
Gretta explains how she took up the game: “We formed a club in Lyre in 1974 and my brothers were bowling – they would throw practice shots, and I was only eight or nine at the time and I had no choice but to throw the bowl back to them. I took it on and got a real grá for it.
“There was nothing happening for women at the time but there was a festival in Clonakilty, and they introduced women’s bowling out the Cottage Road, and they ran a competition and Agnes Hurley and Bridie Hurley and Nora Hurley and myself competed, and that was the start of it.”
Since its inception in 1980, the women’s competition, the Queen of the Roads, has continued to grow in popularity. Geraldine Daly says: “When women’s bowling started in 1980s, there were only four of five women all over the county, whereas when I came along there was a good spread across all nine divisions in the county, even if there were only one or two in some divisions, but we had county quarter-finals and semi-finals and finals.
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“And we get huge crowds too for our games. When I played my Munster Senior Final in Lyre in 2008, there was a huge crowd – definitely it was no different to what it would have been if it was a men’s final, so the women’s game is hugely popular too.”
Castletownkinneigh will later this year host the All-Ireland Championships – much to the delight of local club stalwart, John ‘Cookie’ O’Callaghan.
“We have a tradition of bowling going back over 100 years – the old score used to be from the village of Enniskeane up to the village of Castletown. We’re in a remote enough spot here and may be not widely known, so it’s a great honour for us to host an All-Ireland,” he says.
Castletownkinneigh is one of around 50 bowling clubs in Cork, stretching from the city to every corner of the county as well as those abroad where the Cork diaspora have established clubs in Dagenham in London as well as in Boston, New York, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont and West Virginia in the United States.
Helping to grow the sport at home and abroad are bowlers and bowling fans Eamonn Bowen from Cork and Armagh native Michelle Smith, whose livestreaming of scores via their Road Bowls in Ireland service has 180,000 followers and had 240 million views since 2022.
“You would be shocked where the views are coming from,” says Bowen, “not just Ireland but all over England and America and Australia, and they aren’t all Irish emigrants – we have other nationalities too. They find it unique, and when they ask about it, I say it’s like golf – the least number of shots.”
Smith adds: “Bowling is growing in America – Boston and New York compete with each other, and they travel over here for the Novice All-Ireland while there are huge numbers playing in West Virginia – they have their own merchandise, and they drink moonshine before the score!”
Gambling is part of the sport for some, with supporters of each bowler sometimes putting up matching sums that can often run into thousands of euro, to create a stake which goes to the backers of the winner.
Buckley sums up what bowling means, particularly for Cork: “It’s sort of a subculture around Cork with its own language and traditions: ‘Splitting the sop’; ‘Keep off his hand’ – it’s part of our culture for generations, and long may it continue.”
