Author: huddersfieldpetanque

Sunday 15th July

You’ll know Elaine – she’s been a member for quite a few years now and you know that she has a good day and sometimes a bad day but she always turns up and tries hard. Yesterday, a run of the mill Thursday evening, something happened that was quite miraculous. She decided she wanted to shoot so the club captain who was there gave her a few words of advice to assist the process.

No rocket science just simple aphorisms like if you shoot along the ground there are more bumps and lumps and stones to hit so there’s more chance of the boule going off the line. If you shoot you should go to aim to land as near to the boule you’re shooting as possible – ideally hit it without touching the ground but even landing 6 inches in front is probably good enough. Other simple things like raising your arm just a touch to generate the power to reach the target and gradually Elaine picked this up and her shooting got better and better.

Over a three game session she became the ‘go to’ shooter. People volunteered to be pointer for her so she could practise shooting and following the simple techniques that have been outlined she started hitting a high percentage of shots. Her confidence grew and  she was soon shooting a boule from 3 inches away from the coche and leaving her own boule 5 inches away.

At the very end it was pointed out to her that by shooting one particular boule she could raise her existing score of 1 to 4. She didn’t know at the time but her team was on nine points they had one on the ground the opposition had second but her team had third and fourth. It was suggested that if she shot this particular ball out she would score 4 not just one point. It was a long shot – it was approaching 10 m but she just did it and won the game.

It was an astonishing display of rapid learning – she realised a technique would work and she executed it consistently and she won all three games that evening mainly by shooting out opposition boules. She wasn’t on her own so there’s no fix. Alastair and Yvonne were there watching her turn from an inconsistent pointer to someone who could shoot and hit well over 60% of the time.

It’s all over. But it’s not good news. We ended bottom of the league. It started badly with a 0-5 defeat at Heckmondwike and it ended badly with a 0-5 defeat at Leeds. In between there were some good results but overall we won 12 games out of 40 and deserved last place. Mirfield rose from last to 3rd and Heckmondwike just beat Leeds by 1 game to win the league. We had good and experienced players at all our fixtures but didn’t play well enough to win games. There’s always next year to look forward to. Thanks to all players who played in the league team. This is a competition we were minutes away from winning a couple of years ago. Let’s do better next year. congratulations Heckmondwike,

When we started we had no strings. As we grew and held competitions we added strings around the perimeter and also between pistes. Then we removed most of the strings between pistes and left the perimeter strings. Today all the strings went. Some pegs came out; some pegs stayed in but the strings went.It wasn’t an easy decision. At a committee meeting last week we considered all the options and there were many of them. On one hand perimeter strings were good and we felt we needed them for bigger events. Other clubs almost all had perimeter strings. On the other hand some members had tripped up and fallen on our perimeter strings. No major damage but any fall when you’re over 60 isn’t much fun.

One problem was that our terrain once levelled is now as wavy as Liberace’s hairpiece. In some places strings span a 4m gap 20mm above the ground. Some are buried in gravel. It just ain’t flat. Visits to other clubs show little evidence of tripping up on strings but the evidence at Greenhead Park was building up.

So we’re not having strings unless there’s a big event and we only anticipate half a dozen of these a year. Today’s melee went fine – no strings and no problems. We’re looking at alternatives to strings and it seems at the Marseille event currently being played that they manage with football style white lines. We’ll keep monitoring the situation.

What do you think? String puns welcome. As long as they’re about string.

Hot; 18 people. Winner Paul, 2nd Christine A, 3rd Phil, 4th Robin were the only ones to win 3 games. Paul leaps up the table. Rita has a bad day at the terrain.