Brett O’Riley arrived at a bowling club in Cambridge on a bicycle and was stopped at the gate. 

He and a friend had simply fancied a game. But there was a problem. 

“This guy met us at the gate in a blazer and said, ‘Excuse me, what are you doing here?’” 

They explained that they had come to play bowls. 

“‘Did you call anybody?’ 

“‘Have you got your own woods?’” 

Brett was living in England but had left his bowls in New Zealand. 

“We just wanted to have a social game. 

“And he said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, if you don’t have your own woods, you can’t play.’ 

“Now, that’s probably a perfectly reasonable response, but that’s not our game.” 

They tried another club. 

“We rocked up there and there was just a turnstile. You put some money in and there were bowls that you could borrow. It was all set up. 

“The two experiences couldn’t have been any more different. I understand different clubs have different rules, but the more accessible we can make bowls, the better.” 

The Cambridge experience has stayed with Brett and goes some way to explaining how he approaches his role.  

He is not interested in change for change’s sake. But neither is he prepared to accept that bowls should be defined by the way it has always been played or presented. 

Instead, Brett wants to challenge assumptions about the game he has played for most of his life, and address some of today’s big bowls questions: why does a country need a permanent bowling facility to develop international players? And why should bowls be constrained by traditions and stereotypes? 

Before becoming president of World Bowls, Brett built a career as a chief executive and senior business leader. 

 “I’ve spent my life working in change, change-agent and transformation roles. I’m not a steady-state kind of character,” he laughs. 

When Brett took over in 2024, his first job was less glamorous: putting the structure in place to make his ambitions possible.  

“We’ve now got about 80 people involved in the administration of World Bowls through our committees. That’s huge, and has given us a platform from which to tackle a much broader question: what does the sport need to look like if it is going to thrive?” 

Brett describes the organisation as being in a “consolidation phase”.  

“You can’t do everything, even though I often try, because that’s just in my DNA. 

“Delivering the World Cup in Kuala Lumpur last year and then Glasgow 2026 in July were proof points that we can activate our sport at the highest level and in a pop-up way, which is going to be required if we’re ever going to get in the Olympics. 

“We’ve greatly increased our chances because we’ve made the game more flexible. It doesn’t require a dedicated venue; we could share a hall with other sports. We can set up in about 72 hours and we can pack out in about the same.” 

That flexibility is also changing the way Brett looks at the development of bowls around the world. 

“England were the standout country at the Commonwealth Games, but Malaysia’s performance was pretty incredible. They made the decision to invest in portable rinks and the players obviously trained intensely on those. 

“If that’s what Malaysia can do, effectively you’re saying, you need a hall and you need some portable rinks and you’re away.” 

 

Changing the game 

World Bowls now has around 90 member countries, with the possibility of approaching 100. But Brett is conscious that adding countries to a membership list is not enough. The game has to be healthy within those countries. 

The same applies to nations where bowls has been established for generations. 

He points to the unification of indoor and outdoor bowls in England and the different forms of the sport played across countries including New Zealand and Australia. 

“Bringing those together can help to stem what people would see as a decline in membership. 

“But that’s not unique to bowls. People have a lot more choices now about where they want to spend their leisure time. That’s a reality, and we have to adjust to that.” 

Brett admits he has been intrigued by the idea of a World Barefoot Bowls Championship. 

“There was a World Postal Bowl Championship that used to happen, and it was run by a bowls magazine. The national singles champions of South Africa, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, New Zealand, Australia, all went out to play a short end, a medium end and a long end. 

“The results were written down on a piece of paper, posted in and the world champion was decided. 

“What if we were to have a world championship of barefoot bowls or a world under-18 championship and have it on a social media platform? 

“Why do people have to travel to do that? How do we use the technology which we want to engage people with anyway, through social media? How do we use that to make the game a bit more accessible? 

“If you could be the World Barefoot Bowls Champion, playing at your own club, wouldn’t that be cool?” 

Brett acknowledges that history matters, but also that the game has changed before and will have to change again. 

Bowls, he argues, should be capable of doing so without losing its identity. 

In terms of getting new people through the door, we must delve deeper into what the sport really offers. 

“Someone said to me the other day that bowls is the global solution to loneliness,” Brett says. “That’s an area I’d like us to explore a bit more as a sport. There are aspects of bowls that are quite different from other sports, and I’m not sure we capture that value. 

“Maybe what we think is our greatest disadvantage is actually now our greatest advantage- we are a place where older people want to spend time.” 

 

Formative years 

A lot of Brett’s ideas about bowls were established in childhood. He grew up in New Zealand, where he played bowls with all his grandparents from the age of eight. 

“We lived next door to one set, and I’d play in their upstairs hallway, then in the back garden with the other set who lived around the corner. I just got hooked on the game.” 

He became a club member at 18 and has been involved continuously since 1979, even meeting his wife, decorated player Robyne Walker, through bowls. 

At one stage, Brett aspired to represent New Zealand and made the emerging players team, putting himself on the selectors’ radar for the 1994 Commonwealth Games. At the same time, his professional career was beginning to accelerate. 

“I still like playing competitively and go okay, but found there was an opportunity to leverage some of my other skills into the game that I love.” 

The ambition remains broad: stronger international development, financial sustainability, the World Bowls Series, the World Bowls Academy and, ultimately, a sport that is healthier across its membership rather than simply larger on paper. 

But beneath all of that, for Brett, it’s personal: “I feel like bowls is my tribe. 

“Bowlers are the people that I’ve worked out I like being around. Lots of moments of my life have been shaped by bowls and some of my closest friends are people that I’ve been involved with my whole life. 

“So, it’s my community. It’s not the only community I’m part of, but it’s the community I enjoy. And I think the reason is that people in bowls take you at face value. it’s quite an egalitarian sport. Most people don’t ask you what your job is. Most people don’t care. You just rock up to the bowling club and you’re part of it. 

“I didn’t join a club at 18 just because I wanted to play bowls. It was an opportunity to play bowls with my grandfather, who was one of the most important people in my life.  

“And I often think back to maybe one of the reasons why I do love the game is because subliminally it’s associated with those memories. 

“I’d like to think in five years’ time bowls was viewed differently. I hope that we’ve started to get the message through about it being more than just a sport. 

“You can’t sell a secret. 

“Sometimes we’ve thought that people would just naturally discover what a great game it is because they’d walk through a bowling club gate. 

“But now they’ve got lots of gates to choose from, so we’ve got to work hard to get in front of people.  I hope what we are doing will ensure future generations can walk through the gate and get a welcoming e experience, no matter where in the world the bowling club or experience is located.”