Petanque Wallingford

The engraved plates for the winners of the trophies arrived on Thursday, so Wendy and Thérèse added them this morning to the two trophies Adrian had made, along with the pyrographed Winter League plates made by Wendy.
No time was wasted in handing over the trophies! Dave Chalkley turned up just in time! Very unusual for Dave to play on a Friday (he works).

Our second evening league running through pre and post lockdowns has recently been completed. As well as tier 2 and tier 3 restrictions, when the last lockdown finished we were confronted by 2 of our pairs having to withdraw through injury and 2 other teams being delayed by injuries so our original plan to finish pre Christmas was truly thwarted, hence, the completion in the third week of May!
     Monday 17th May was a great night which provided a fantastic final match of the league. A match that would determine which of the three top teams would end top of the league. Team G had already completed their matches and were ranked 2 after playing all 7 matches. They were sandwiched by leaders Team B and third placed Team A, who were competing on Monday night, the 17th May.  As you can see from the pre match leader board above any of the top three teams could have topped the league. Most likely to win was team B who needed just one game to end with 14 games and an unasailable points difference. For team A the needed to win all three games and do it with at least a 26 points difference – a huge challenge! Conversely for team G they needed team A to beat team B but with a points difference of less than 25. The match was a nail biting affair with the result shown below:-

So……. Congratulations to team G – Chris MacGuire and Dave Chalkley.
     Commiserations to team B, Tony Murell and John Johnson who led the leader board for almost all of the competition.
Commiserations also to team A, Chris Hurst and Mark Dowman who won more matches than every other team.
But what a night for team G, Chris M and Dave who ended up the winners thanks in the main to Chris M who sat quietly watching, while all the time using immense mental powers in willing team A on to win, but, also willing on team B to ensure a sufficient points score to stop team A from overtaking team G in the points difference table. No doubt Chris was using his phone’s calculator throughout the night to ensure that his team were still ahead on points!
A big thanks to everyone who showed up last night to make it a great occasion and also thanks for bringing along all the nibbles and drinks.
Also a big thank you to all the players who played in a great spirit and with such grace in victory and loss.
Finally a word for those who through injury could not see the competition out. We all wish Jane (S) a full recovery and also hope that Sarah’s back improves soon.
Thank you also to Adrian for making the trophies, and to Wendy and Thérèse who will be inscribing the names on the trophies.

Like everyone we have suffered from the pandemic – not everyone renewed their membership for 2021.

So it was decided to hold some taster sessions in the hope of getting some new members. The first was held this morning, Tuesday 11 May. To our amazement and delight we had 16 people come along.
 
Coach Loren gave a little talk about the origins of Petanque. Mike (also a coach) showed them the basics of throwing and a few fundamentals of the game. They then split the 16 into 4 groups. We had most of our club boules out of the cupboard to get three to everyone. The club boules are a bit of a challenge to play with as so many look the same.
 
Loren, Wendy, Pete and Mike each took one group I think we all managed to play a full game. We spent most of the session playing 4 sets of pairs. With 16 the numbers worked out perfectly. I think everyone was having a good time to judge by all the questions asked and enjoyment everyone appeared to be having.
 
We had some heavy bursts of rain and even hail but everyone played through despite the discomfort. The sun came out in the end so we ended on a high note. A good couple of hours in all. Some stars of the future in the making here, maybe.
 
We have offered pro-rata membership - £5 per month to the end of the year taking June as the first full month. We also explained to everyone that they could play at any club session for £2 head. This all seemed to go down very well. Lets hope for another good turnout for the taster on Sunday 16th May.