
And a nice day it was, expecially after the soakings we had recently. 20 visitors from other Thames Valley clubs came to play with 18 of us on our boulodrome in the Park.
The day was run as an individual melee (panache as the Americans call it) and we played 4 timed games in the morning, broke for an hour for lunch (Lamoon and her helpers in the kitchen did us proud again) and two games in the afternoon. People drew numbers out the bags on arrival – one bag for the visitors and another bag for the Petanque Wallingford players. The board was formed (totally at random) of 5 doubles and 3 triples, each team consisting of players representing the visitors and Petanque Wallingford members.
We started promptly at 10.00 and had really fun games. Ros and Kevin did a fantastic job running the 'control desk' : recording the scores, checking entries and keeping the running total. And Ros helped me change the tags between games.
After six games the winners were:
1st Place: Dean Webb from Burnham Petanque Club, 2nd Place Loren Butt (our President), and 3rd Place our member Moiya Clark. The Friendliest Player Alec Hayton. (I am still champion! with -40….). Each winner received a trophy and a monetary prize: Mike Crook turned the bases and fixed in the dotty egg cups with our badge and I pyrographed the details. Moiya and Loren returned their prize money to the club (thank you very much) and Loren presented me with his trophy and thanks for organising the day which everyone enjoyed very much. I am pleased to have the trophy - I would have loved to have won it (in fact I didn't lose a single game! Well I didn't play any so that figures … I maintain that you can't organize a match and play!). I am sure our members, some of whom have only been playing for 5 months, learned a lot from the 'visitors' most of whom have been playing for ages. We'll do the same next year and hope for more of our people so we can have the maximum 48 people playing.
Thérèse