Chess with steel balls in Greenhead Park
It took a while. Years of practice and moving to harder and harder competitions but a squad of 4 HPC players finally qualified to play for the Northern Region. Qualifiers were held in June when they played against 12 other teams of hopefuls in a round robin where they played every other team and ended up as the 9th best team in the region and 12 teams out of 13 qualified.
First outing was today in Mansfield when they played a 6 round triangular triples competition with Mercia and Heart of England regions. It was practice for the annual regional tournament which is at Hayling Island in September. And it went very well. The squad of Roy, Brendan, Richard and Paul played 6 games and won 4 of them which was one of the best results for the 8 Northern teams. In the end the triangular competition ended with teams on 25, 24 and 23 wins. Northern were 2nd.There may be other regional matches and this squad will be eligible to play in this. Watch this space.
We recently bought 2 huge planters from the Mens workshop at Platform 1 at Huddersfield Station. About 1m by 1m by 1m they look impressive and have just been filled. 
Sandra B and Christine A went to the Friends of Greenhead Park drop in meeting recently and heard that KMC were giving away plants if used in the park BUT the dates were when both ladies were away on holiday. So Christine contacted KMC and explained that we would like to take advantage of the offer but couldn’t do the dates. The outcome was that she was invited to collect plants immediately which they did with the help of a few club members. They got almost 100 plants and also enough top soil to fill the planters! Christine and Sandra spent the afternoon filling the planters, sprucing up the basket and planting the remaining plants in the garden area. And well watering everything. What stars!
The planters look fantastic and seeing them filled with plants makes me think we should reconsider painting them. I think they look better natural and the dark green would be too much. . Christine and Sandra have done a really fantastic job today.
It started with a phone call saying can we use your terrain for a return match with Halifax. This was two branches of Pendragon 41 an older version of Round Table one from either side of the hills. There’ll be 18 people. Last year it was played at Sowerby on a small terrain and teams had to queue up to play. Of course we said yes and a date was set and we said we’d supply the boules and a few club members to act as umpires, run a 2 round competition with 3 triples each and present a trophy and some medals.
We said our clubhouse would be available if they wanted to put on light refreshments and they said they would. On the morning of the event I heard that they had visited the terrain and were now bringing 37 people! Frantic rearranging took place as we had to borrow another 10 sets of boules from our friends at Heckmondwike but we made it and at 1830 the terrain was ready, the scorecard was ready. A man in a van had arrived with 120 bottles of beer, a large ice bucket and 20 baguettes and some players had arrived. As we listed the teams it became clear that we weren’t going to start on time as players were arriving in drinks and drabs, some stopping off at the Junction en route. At 1900 we started with 11 triples and one pair. There were still latecomers and the final total was 39.
The games were played in a good spirit. After 2 rounds Huddersfield based teams had won 9 and Halifax teams just 3. Huddersfield were presented with the trophy. Here’s Charlie & Elizabeth.
But it still wasn’t over as we had 3 medals for the winning team members. There was draw between Huddersfield 2 and Huddersfield 3 both win 2 wins and +9 so a super over was played. The super over had 2 boules and produced a magnificent climax to a rip roaring evening. They’re planning to do it again next year.
Huddersfield Pétanque 