Lawn bowls gives Commonwealth Games minnows a chance to shine

LEAMINGTON SPA, England: The Falkland Islands, Niue and Norfolk Island are unlikely to produce a 100m champion, but lawn bowls is a chance for them to "put their flag on the map" at the Commonwealth Games.

"Niue is a rock, it's a big coral rock," Olivia Buckingham told AFP after she and her partner lost 26-9 to South Africa in the women's pairs.

"To have a bowling green on there, I'm bloody proud of them."

The sport, which has appeared at every Commonwealth Games apart from the 1966 edition, is often viewed as a game played by the elderly in quiet suburbs, but the verdant greens of Leamington Spa, near host city Birmingham, gave the lie to that.

There were packed stands watching the men's pairs final, in which Wales beat England, with the crowd largely made up of families not shy of raising the decibel levels.

Away from the hullabaloo - the music being played was mellower than the rap that accompanied the beach volleyball in Birmingham - there were more subdued ripples of applause for the pool matches.

Legend has it that British naval officer Francis Drake was playing lawn bowls when the news came through that the Spanish Armada was approaching Britain in 1588.

But both Norfolk Island and the Falklands can also lay claim to a shared passion for bowls and a intriguing naval history.

Many of Norfolk Island's population, including members of their bowls team, are descended from Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers, who seized the British ship the HMS Bounty in the South Pacific in 1789 before initially settling on Pitcairn Island.

The Falklands were recaptured by British forces following an invasion by Argentina in 1982.

Their bowls team - comprising five of the 16-member squad, which also includes an aunt and nephew competing