October first Sunday

A pairs competition. 11 teams. 22 players, 3 rounds, 2 new players.

Turned out nice despite threats of rain and a full afternoon of petanque with only 2 teams winning all 3 games. Roy and Brendan edged out Kevin and Christine (a fairly thick edge) on points difference. Well done Reg & Brenda. Thrown in at the deep end on their first visit and beat quite a few experienced teams to finish 6th.

Next similar competition November 1st. We may have to start earlier with the change of hour. Sunset that day is 1633. Watch the blog and AWIP.

Sunday Pairs

With monthly members melees on hold due to Covid 19 we had a 3 round pairs competition on the 6th September. Social distancing was observed and only one person did all the paperwork. The latest version of Auto score was used to record the results. Here they are.

 

Members Melee August

A different type of members melee. There were 22 people at the terrain, some not playing, some playing in singles league games or 123 team games and some in a melee. There were 2 visitors from Bordeaux on holiday in Huddersfield who just happened to have brought their boules with them. Some were late; some dropped out but after everything was taken into consideration the winner was Richard followed by 4 ladies.

Our procedures today were that a) no-one touches anyone else’s boules, coches, the scoresheet, the pen etc and b) drawing of numbers, allocation of lanes and recording of scores were done by one person only. A Track & Trace register was kept and will be kept for 21 days and gel & wipes were provided by the club and were well used. We had contingency plans if more than 30 turned up but didn’t need them.

It was also the live testing of a spreadsheet that will calculate melee results and it needed testing as a couple of bugs were found. If there are any Excel experts out there who want to collaborate on this please get in touch. With scores input the system calculates and flags wins and after all results are in a macro sorts wins and points and produces positions.  Worked OK but needs more sophistication.

Next Members melee September 6th. Not sure what the rules & restrictions will be then.

 

new PE guidance

We can resume normal club sessions if we follow a few rules. One involves undertaking a risk assessment of covid19. See this by clicking here

Key elements

a)     Railings to be wiped down before play. b)    Keep 2m apart inside Clubhouse. No catering. c)     No more than 2 people to go inside storage shed d)    For club sessions one person to act as registrar/scorer and do all admin. To register players on arrival by filling in Track/Trace sheet which is retained for 21 days; to draw numbers and inform member their number without members touching numbers; to strike out members who leave the session from Track/trace sheet; To open lane allocation booklet to correct page. Members report score to scorer while maintaining social distancing. e)    Keep 2m apart on benches f)      Members to be advised to bring waterproofs and/or brolley to avoid overcrowding the club house. g)     Club will provide hand sanitizer and wipes. Use before play. h)    Bring your own chair i)      If more than 30 on site both entrances to be blocked off using high viz chain. Signs to be produced to hang on chains. NO ENTRY – due to Covid 19 restrictions

This will be trialled on tomorrow and if all goes well we will have a Monthly members melee on Sunday 2nd August. We may need volunteers to do the admin role. If there is no competition teams can be arranged without using numbered disks but registration sheets must be used until further notice.

Champions of Champions 2019

This handsome trophy which will be awarded annually to the most successful player in a series of club competitions was due to be presented at the AGM in April which was postponed. Then it was going to be awarded at the July members Melee which was postponed so we thought it would be better to give it out before we reached 2021 so here it is.

You can just about read the winners’ names but it has joint winners Maureen & Brendan.

See the details by clicking on this link here

distancing doubles winners

 

Nice sunny day, 24 players played 3 rounds and Jan & Jane won all 3 games with a points difference of 23 to just pip Clive and Kath on 3W  + 20.

In the picture above we’re showing our 2m distancing. Those close to each other are married. Everyone remained 2m apart all afternoon. We only used 6 of our 15 lanes so games were all 3m apart. Everyone used their own coche, boules, measurer. There were no scoreboards and results were input by 1 person using 1 pen to 1 scoresheet which no-one else used. No drawing of numbers from a bag.

As a result of this we think we can run a members monthly melee on 5th July. Distancing rules and not touching anything that isn’t yours will still apply. Summer melee with be 4 dates July to October and winter melee will be 5 rounds November to March. Best 3 scores will count.

 

 

 

Singles league and Distancing Doubles.

Play has restarted recently & using distancing rules a singles league is running with 10 players.

As of Thursday June 11th members had played 32 matches in the Singles League. In the lead at the moment are Roy and Clive both on 7 wins but Roy has played all his 10 games whilst Clive has 3 more to play. There are still 23 matches to be contested so this situation will certainly change.  See the latest league table at this link here

We’re also planning a pairs event on Tuesday  June 23rd at 1:00pm. No need to book just turn up on the day. Choose your partner or take pot luck. We will only have 7 lanes available to play on so the maximum number of players will be 28.   We thought about calling it Covid Pairs or Social teams but decided in the end on Distancing Doubles.

New playing rules to cover doubles play are here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lockdown Update

Some play is possible following guidance from National Governing bodies. 2 members who are in the same family group can now play; 2 individuals who are not in the same family group can play as long as they socially distance. No doubles or triples can be played.

The secretary has emailed members with guidelines for playing and members can play at any time as “Club sessions” will not run for sometime and there will be no competitions for some time.

The clubhouse is closed. Please bring your own drinks if you want to.

For more information contact club secretary.

It’s a knockout!

Running a competition and most people think of a knockout like the FA Cup but it’s not that easy. With the uncertainty of how many will turn up some work needs to be done. Here’s our rough guide to KOs.  It’s a knockout

Playing to the rules

It’s a funny old game pétanque. Most people have picked up a garbled version of the rules on holiday or from a friend “who knew the game” but when you start a club you’ll most likely have to start from scratch but which rules do you teach?

Do you need  the Official rules of the international governing body? There is a view that these are poorly written concentrating too much on the highest level of the game and the penalties for non compliance, umpires and juries that are just too demanding for most club members. Look at the FIPJP rules

Or should you use a simple set of Picture rules which are very simplistic but may cater for social players. Try the Picture Rules

Or a short set of the official rules but with the competition level rules removed? See Short 2020

Or the latest concept the Free rules which have been prepared by an aficionado trying to get away from the complicated and archaic Official rules and provide down to earth solutions. Revolutionary but intriguing Pétanque Libre