Team Positions – Skip

To conclude our round up of short mat bowls playing positions, we move onto the position of skip.

As the skip is the last player to bowl in any team, there is generally already a lot of bowls littered about the end and this can make it a lot more difficult to draw a scoring wood. Therefore, out of all the positions skip is arguably the one which is the most challenging or at least the one with the most responsibility.

A skip is the player that really proves their worth when their team is down in an end. In these instances, they will generally be required to play with a more attacking style than those players who have gone before and, because of this, they should ideally have good ability playing with weight.

However, it’s not simply about launching your bowls down the mat in an attempt to obliterate your opponents’ bowls from the end, as you obviously have to allow for the wooden block in the centre. Therefore, the ability to play with controlled weight is imperative so that the bias of the bowl can still do it’s job; allowing you to peg around the block and into the head.

If your team is already counting shot then the role of skip is similar to the other playing positions, whereby you should aim to protect those bowls already counting shot or look for opportunities to add more to your score.

Occasionally, an end can be played out where your opponents have the shot bowl and it is extremely difficult to produce either a scoring wood or play an attacking shot that is without any great risk. In these instances, a skip might choose to play a “damage limitation” bowl, where they aim to deliver a wood within the head to try and reduce their opponents’ shot count. Although, I have to say it’s not too often that you see this kind of play as most skips I know will always give themselves a chance to save the day with a dream bowl!

So that just about covers all the playing positions involved in games of short mat bowls. Hopefully, you'll now have a good idea about the roles and responsibilities (and maybe personality traits!) that tend to be associated with each member of a short mat bowls team.