By David Nagel
A wonderful feeling of satisfaction swept through the body of Eric Sydenham after the 73-year-old received the coveted Bowls Australia Volunteer of the Year Award on the Gold Coast in early October.
Sydenham felt wonderful personal fulfilment – and so he should after being selected from over 1800 bowls club from across the country – but his immediate gratitude turned to those he had worked beside to make the Narre Warren Bowls Club one of the most respected and progressive bowls clubs in the land.
“I’m still pinching myself now, it was unbelievable, to be in a room with people that I have idolised since I started playing bowls…it was like having all your heroes in the one room and you get to talk to them,” Sydenham said.
“I was speechless, in a daze, but when I got up on stage and started to talk there was one thing that struck me.
“I’m so proud of the fact that we were able to do this for Narre Warren, it’s a club great, one of the best clubs you could ever belong to.
“We started out as a little club and we are now regarded as a pretty major club in Victoria, with the growth we’ve had and what we’ve been able to achieve.
“To be able to receive something like this, on behalf of all the people at the club, who work and volunteer to achieve what we have, was the most important thing for me on the night.
“A lot of us have worked hard to put Narre Warren on the map.
“Part of our original mantra is that we’re a community club, a community hub, and we want to make ourselves the best small club in Victoria.
“But we’ve had to elevate that ambition somewhat, due to the rapid rate of our growth.”
Like most bowlers of his vintage, the story of Eric Sydenham has great depth and character.
He was born in Sydney where his dad Ned was a very good bowler, even receiving a special write up in the Daily Mirror regarding him as one of the finest bowlers to have never represented New South Wales.
But while the bowling bug was hereditary, it was golf that was Eric’s early passion.
He played regularly in New Guinea, where he was stationed as a specialist lender with the Commonwealth Bank in 1982.
He moved there with his wife Estelle, and three children, Siobojn, Erin and Sean, and discovered his love for bowls while there.
“I’d walk past the bowls club on the way home from work, have Friday night drinks there, and pretty soon I was playing socially on really heavy greens and I liked it,” Sydenham recalls.
The family then moved to Perth in 1984, where Eric’s passion for bowls grew even fonder, before a stint in Kununurra, in the East Kimberley, gave the first hint of his off-rink administration skills.
“The only option for playing bowls in Kununurra was on the outdoor cricket nets, an old synthetic surface that had paint and ridges all over it,” Eric said.
“I said to everyone ‘this isn’t bowls,’ so we got some like-minded people together and convinced the Sports Club to build a bowling green.
“I spent many weekends on the vibrating roller and the water truck, helping build the first sand-filled synthetic green in East Kimberley.
“The nearest clubs were Broome, 11,000 kilometres to the west, and Katherine, which was 550 kilometres to the east (laughs).
“I only got to have one roll-up before heading back to Perth, but I was back there not long ago and it’s still going strong 34 years later.”
Sydenham and his family returned to Perth in 1988, where he played Premier League bowls and instigated the initial change from creams to coloured clothing, before the lure of grandchildren saw he and Estelle move to Narre Warren in 2013.
Their new home was smack-bang in the middle of the Hampton Park and Narre Warren bowls clubs, with a roll-up and beer with the president of Narre Warren making the final decision an easy one.
Within three years, Sydenham was president himself.
“Narre Warren was a nice social club that was built in 1987 and had not long migrated from West Gippsland to the Metro region,” Sydenham explained.
“But it wasn’t going forward, and if you’re not going forward, you’re going back.
“We formed a committee, six years ago.
“I was president and we had people with backgrounds in engineering and commerce who got together and formulated a five-year plan.
“We organised morning teas for the Federal and State members of our electorate and we told them what our plan was and that we wanted to build a roof over one of our greens.
“Looking back now, we achieved most of the things in that plan.”
Sydenham spent two years as president, finishing in 2018, before becoming the Major Projects Manager at the club.
In unison with new president Peter Groom, the team at Narre Warren spent five years rounding up the funds to make the roof-top project a reality.
Sydenham even spent time in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria looking at the different roofs of clubs to get the best-case scenario at Narre Warren.
The build was supported with $500,000 from both the Federal and State Government, $390,000 from the Australian Sports Commission, $50,000 from Casey Council, along with a number of community donations.
“We raised enough money to build two roofs rather than one, and we tried to think of everything,” Sydenham said proudly.
“We have vision impaired bowlers and they gave feedback on what their challenges are playing bowls.
“That resulted in the club including a unique lighting system that allows the club to increase the lightning intensity for vision impaired bowlers when needed.
“Building commenced on March 1, 2021, and was completed on July 1, 2021.”
The two new roofs have transformed the club in a positive way, with participation (sorry for this) going through the roof!
“We’ve more than doubled our bowls memberships and our social memberships have increased even more,” Sydenham, secretary for the last three years, said.
“Our participation rate has gone up incredibly.
“Social events, formerly we had 20 to 25 playing, now we have 80 playing outside of pennant season, and 50 or 60 on a Wednesday.
“We’ve also started some other competitions, that are played in other states, that are proving very popular as well.”
As well as building two immense roofing structures, the Narre Warren Bowls Club has also been at the forefront of scoreboard technology, working with a local company to develop a special product that takes pride of place at the club.
“The scoreboard system is unique, and was developed with a local company from Cheltenham, who had only ever done cricket and footy grounds before,” Sydenham said.
“We wanted them to help us put up a video screen at the front of the club, to help promote what we are doing, and they wanted to get involved in bowling clubs.
“We formed a partnership, giving them the background of bowling clubs and scoring and developing a set up that no-one else in the world has got.
“It’s so sought after that the biggest bowls club in Australia, Tweed Heads Bowls Club, is sending down a delegation to look at our scoreboard and roof set up as part of their $16million redevelopment.”
Narre Warren also received a special visit towards the end of October, with Steve Glasson – who was elevated to legend status in the Bowls Australia Hall of Fame on the same night that Sydenham received his award – excited by the club’s facilities.
“He hadn’t seen it before and his response was ‘this is absolutely amazing’,” Sydenham said.
“He said we are probably one of the only clubs in Australia that is trying to increase the number of greens, because a lot of clubs are losing greens.”
Sydenham, also involved in sponsorship, fundraising and cooking, is currently project manager for the development of a third green at Narre Warren, a four-rink set up that is also planned to be undercover.
Sydenham and the club are currently in preliminary discussions with council about acquiring the car park, at the northern end of the current greens, which is owned by Westfield.
The City of Casey, which regards the complex at Narre Warren as the “Jewell in the Crown” of its sporting facilities, is also investing $750,000 on major renovations to the club, which will bring the facility up to the standards of modern times.
Eric Sydenham still bowls twice a week, in Saturday and Tuesday pennant, and can’t imagine his life without bowls.
And he can’t imagine his life without those he had worked beside to make the Narre Warren Bowls Club one of the most respected and progressive bowls clubs in the land.
