Author: huddersfieldpetanque

Open Day is getting bigger. On Bank Holiday Monday we will be open for business from 11am to 4pm and hope to have many visitors trying out the game. So far we have a Cake stall (Elizabeth), a Tombola (Sue) and a Trophy Table (Paul). Bunting should be available and any other ideas are welcome. The examiner knows and Friends of Greenhead Park have put it in their newsletter. Emails with the poster above have been sent to local sports clubs and also to farflung places such as Halifax, Wakefield and Bradford. A tweet will be going out tonight on our twitter account. I think our facebook page will also have a feature.

We’ll need members to pop in and help out with setting up and helping show visitors how to play the game.

If members can’t be there they can still help by sending friends and family a link to this page and asking them to come along. This is it. Copy and paste it into an email.

https://huddersfieldpetanque.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/open-day/

After another stunning win Marie is top of the table. With the maximum possible score of 39 she already has 26 and 4 more events to score a big one and win the whole season. The day’s scores are here summer melees AprMay and the cumulative table is here summer melee so far. Next date is June 5th.

St Georges Day melee was surprisingly well attended. 13 pairs played 3 rounds and paid an entry fee for the pleasure. The club was able to offer Cash Prizes for the top 4 teams and Rock ‘n’Roll scooped the top prize of £20. Other winners were Livesey Family, Guest Family and Brendan & Maggie. There may be some pictures soon as Brendan took a few and email now extends to the south of France so they may arrrive soon.

Tuesday saw the second fixture of the West Yorkshire league and our squad played very well to record their 2nd 4-1 victory. Last season we won 11 games in the whole season and this season we’re already on 8 wins. Last year’s  champions Heckmondwike are in last place  (for now) but Huddersfield are doing really well.

Maybe it’s down to the training talks, the practice and the dynamic leadership of our new captain.

When any club starts they keep score in their heads; then someone brings along a pocket scorer usually borrowed from a bowls player then someone find the pocket score keeper in the USA and buys a few. Eventually some makeshift scorers are made out of wood and pegs.

Our first attempts were basically a ruler fixed on top of a 2 b’ 3 wooden block and a nail. A hole was made in the sleeper and the nail located in that hole and the scorer stood at a jaunty angle and showed off its home made numbers drawn in felt tip pen by someone. A peg was used to clip opposite the number and it sort of worked. When both teams had the same number of points one of the pegs fell off. It stayed leaning in its hole somewhere near where the game was being played.

One day the chairman of the club says  “Let’s go for quality” and a few members get together and brainstorm what the perfect scoreboard should look like. Round our way many terrains are constructed by the local council and as a consequence all have railway sleepers as a surround.

Our design thoughts were simple. We needed stable stand-alone scoreboards that could be moved to wherever they were needed. They needed to be lightweight. They should straddle the sleeper and stand up straight. The numbers should be clear and professionally drawn. The pegs shouldn’t overlap each other. We thought of wood but ended up with plastic as a friend of a member owned a plastics factory. He bent a slab of white plastic into the desired shape (it’s about 150mm wide and 500mm tall). Another friend of a member produced a set of numbers printed as a see through transfer which could be applied to the face of the scorer.

The finished product fitted all the design criteria. You can read the numbers from 12m away, the scorers can be moved to wherever the game is and they will always straddle the wooden sleepers. Pegs don’t meet in the middle. In fact they don’t cover the numbers at all. They all have temporarily an elastic band at the base that supplies enough tension to clamp the scorer onto the sleeper.

We spent money, obviously, but the effect is well worth it. These are solid, durable and look very impressive. If the numbers wear out we can replace them. Each scorer cost about £10 but I can see them being in use for many years to come.