Ignorance of this Law of Bowls can cost you the Match

Often in in-club tournaments a match outcome hinges upon control of the mat; one team does better on short ends, the other on long ones. Yet, in such in-club games, the leads may both be very new bowlers. The lead with the mat may, for example, deliver the jack too short or too wide and the other lead may then put the jack out or in the forward ditch. In this situation, the rule is that the jack is centered two meters from the forward ditch and the origin lead delivers the first bowl. What is often not remembered is that in this situation, the original lead bowler may move the mat forward to wherever his/her skip wants it to be placed before that first bowl is rolled. This is crucial because the original lead’s team may be the one needing a short jack and, if they don’t know the rule, that team will be faced with a very long one!

To quote chapter and verse, in Laws of the Sport of Bowls, Crystal Mark, Third Edition, rule 10.3 states, “If the jack is delivered improperly once by each player in any end, it must not be delivered again in that end. Instead, it must be centered with the nearest point of the jack to the mat line being two meters from the front ditch, and the mat must be placed as described in 6.1.1 by the first player to play”.
 Rule 6.1.1 in turn states, “Before the start of play in each end, the player to play first must place the center line of the mat lengthwise along the center line of the rink, with the mat line at least two meters from the rear ditch and at least 25 [23 in Canada] meters from the front ditch”.
In other words, the team that will play first regains control of the jack length because they can adjust the position of the mat before bowling the first bowl!