UPDATE: World Series Bowls

AHEAD of tonight’s meeting at Worthing Pavilion, Sian Honnor spoke to Robert Palser, the man left holding the baby after his business partner and fellow World Series Bowls director Stephen Roberts put a bleak message on the WSB website and has not been contactable since.

He said: “I want to give people the opportunity to have a face to face question and answer session.

“People will assume that I am involved in this and that is partly my motivation for the meetings as I know there will be many who want to vent.

“It is also to gauge what people want to do about Planet Bowls going forward.”

Palser says that he has been in email contact with his business partner, who was due to return to the UK from Russia last week. The last contact was August 6.

Meanwhile, wannabe detectives have discovered a number of items being sold on Ebay as well as a vacant property in Corby.

Interestingly, World Series Bowls had listed itself on Crowd Funder, a website that asks for monetary contributions from a large number of people, with a target figure of £350,000.

The ‘about the project’ box said money was required to ‘pre-fund the initial workings of the project and allow the sales of advertising to kick in.

“We have 18 tournaments panned for the 2015/6 season throughout the UK and Cyprus. The Sky deal is done, all production rights are in house and players are committed.”

Yet Palser admitted to Bowls International that a meeting arranged with Sky never went ahead.

He also said that dealings were with Information TV, a channel that feeds into Sky, rather than with Sky itself, despite earlier claims to the contrary.

As for the deal with Henselite, no money was ever exchanged according to Palser.

So what of the other two directors for WSB, Danny Denison and Keith Wadhams?

Palser said: “Danny quit around the PBA stuff back in February and was never reinstated while Keith was a director until there was a time back in June when another tranche of investment was needed and he decided that he did not want to or could not put any more money in so decided to relinquish his directorship.”

Palser claims he never had access to the bank accounts and therefore is unable to see how much money is left, stop the account or return fees to players.

He added: “Looking back, I should have got more involved in that aspect, but my main focus was on clubs, marketing and player contacts.”

How much money is in the account and therefore allegedly missing?

“There were in the region of 700 entries for the event and between £100,000 and £120,000 in the pot,” Palser said.

“What I do not know is whether Steve had received some sort of sponsor’s money. We were working on some stuff.

“People say how can someone run off with that amount but what I would say to them is that I have got to know Steve well over the past few years and he has put a lot of work into all this.

“If he wanted to take the money he could have done it three months ago.

“This is a massive bolt from the blue but we have to think he might come back.

“My own credibility has been shot to pieces and I would not expect to have any major involvement with running any bowls events in the near future unless there was an overwhelming desire from people for me to do so and I am not sure I can see that happening.

“My priority is to find the money and return player’s fees.

“It is a desperate situation- I have had better weeks.”

The first meeting is tonight at Worthing Pavilion at 7pm.