They won Australia over with their enticing Beyoncé parody video, but a heated meeting with their council last night proved the lawn bowls gang will be the best thing Chadstone never had.
Just for the record, that’s three Beyoncé puns in three lines and I’ll be damned if I don’t sneak in a few more.
More than 200 people and their yellow helium balloons squeezed into the Stonnington Council meeting only to have their hopes shattered when Cr Matthew Koce announced the bowling greens would be bulldozed to make way for indoor sports courts.
“Its about catering to different age groups,” Cr Koce said.
“Our children will play sport that otherwise they’d miss out on.”
The meeting got rowdy as supporters of the greens heckled the councillors for their decision.
The fierce “Bowling Ladies” gained notoriety when they enlisted Beyoncé to ask the council to get in formation and save their lawn bowls club.
That was another one, by the way.
Three women aged from, er, “28” to 82 have posted a Single Ladies inspired video on social media as an attempt to save their beloved club being replaced with a $25 million sports stadium.
Instead of preaching about sisterhood and break-ups, Terry Foster, 82, Janine Hall, 82, and Wyn Hewett, 72 reframe the ballad to ask Stonnington Council to “please pay attention”.
WATCH: Fan massively outshine Beyoncé at her own concert.
“Cause we’re bowlers and you can’t take this away from us,” the chorus goes.
“Now we’re mad and you won’t get away with it.”
It was Denise Wallish, from the Save Chaddy Bowls committee, behind the reworked lyrics and she revealed two of the clip’s stars didn’t even know who Beyoncé was before they were called on to perform.
The tough dance moves had the dancers yelling “I hurt me hip” and “I nearly pulled my shoulder” according to The Herald Sun, but the space is too important to let them stop them.
“I’m only 82, but for some of the older members this is more than a bowls club, it’s their connection with their community,” Ms Foster told Fairfax
Such a connection, that Ms Wallish told the ABC, “We have a man in his 90s who said he would chain himself to the fence to save it”.
Although they looked at three alternative sites for the indoor sports centre, the Chadstone Bowls Club remained the preferred location.
“Maybe for part two we’ll come back in fishnets,” Ms Hewett had said before the devastating blow.
