At training with the blind bowls world champions

Every Tuesday morning at Avalon Beach Bowls Club, at the furthest tip of Sydney's "insular peninsula", and heading to the practise greens, is part of the team that won last year's International Blind Bowls World Championships.

Contested Olympiad-like every four years, last year's final at Tweed Heads would see South Africa narrowly defeated by the locals. "So world champions?" I ask, somewhat taken aback. "Well, when was the ticker-tape parade?"

Maureen Eves, the coordinator of Avalon's Blind Bowls, chuckles gently behind her hand, but is also keen to highlight her players' success on a state and national level as well. One of her star students is Merrisa Wills.

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Merrisa would lose her sight in 1990, when she was 17 years old.

"The car went under a parked bobcat trailer, and the roof rolled in and shattered my forehead, the optic nerves died from lack of blood," Merrisa says, as she prepares to throw her first bowl down the green.

In blind bowls terms, she is a B1, the category for those totally blind. The sliding scale ends at B4, for those with limited sight. Maureen acts as Merrisa's "director".

"So the B1s definitely have to have a director like me, because they don't know whether they're facing the front end of the green or the back of green," says Maureen, positioning herself a metre or so in front of Merrisa, forming an A frame with her body, her legs slightly apart, a target for Merrisa to aim.

"She aims for where my voice is coming from," says Maureen.

"The hardest thing in bowls actually, is to adjust a short distance," says fellow director and coach Peter Ward.

"When you haven't got sight, you're relying on your director, and the line they're telling to take."

And running shotgun as director to another player is former newshound and Avalon Beach Bowlo regular Terry Willesee.

"I wasn't going too well, and the boys said, why don't you go and have a game with the blind bowlers, you might have a chance."