Friday 23 October 2009

Victory at last!

Bit late this post, but I've been busy!

Sunday 11 October was our last open competition of the year, the Inverleith Cash Pairs.  Unlike our other open's, this competition is cash only prizes. This is the second year we have tried this.  The club don't make a profit from the competition at all - entry fees, raffle and catering proceeds all go into the prize pot. We also add in a little sponsorship money to bolster the fund.  It's our way of thanking all those who support our opens during the year.

Reminds me, must make a concerted effort to support Perth's opens from now on - they are huge supporters of ours and it's about time we reciprocated. I digress.

12 teams turned out on what proved to be a lovely autumn day.  It was a shame the entry was so low, may consider shifting to the height of the season next year.  Would also be great to attract teams from England, but we'll need to advertise a reasonable cash prize for that, to make it worth their while coming up here!

Ben and I played together again, me back to shooting which I much prefer.  We were placed 2nd in this competition last year and were determined to, again, play well.

Morning was 4 leagues of 3.  Much better than the 'league of 5' debacle of last year - we've learned our lesson.  Top 8 teams from the morning leagues to go into the afternoon swiss for the title, those who failed to qualify to play in a 4 team round robin for the plate.

We were unfortunately drawn in an all Inverleith league - Mags and Monty, and Emma and her pal who's name I've forgotten.  A big win against Emma's team virtually assured us of qualification after our first game.  We then beat Mags and Monty to finish top of the group (although with a random draw for the afternoon's play it made no odds whether we finished 1st or 2nd).  The other 2 formidable teams, Johnny/Robbie and Byron/Stephane made it through too (despite being drawn in the same league).

In the afternoon we were drawn against Douglas and Stuart in the first round.  We won the toss and took them to our newly built piste.  We had the option of being really nasty and taking them onto 'The Hill' which can make pointing a real challenge, but opted instead for the more flat area, which I think is actually a better piste as although it appears flat, it in fact has a large amount of variable swing, soft parts and some very firm parts.  It can make pointing difficult and is often unforgiving to the shooter who lands short. It was a good decision.  Familiarity with the piste was proving to be the difference between the teams and we won comfortably, our opponents having no luck at all.

On to the semi-final.  Byron and Stephane won their first game and so were our opponents.  We knew it was likely that they, being reigning Scottish Pairs Champions, would be tough to beat and we'd need to be on our game.  We won the toss and elected for the same new piste as the first round.  The first few ends we exchanged a handful of points.

With us leading 3-2 we faced our most challenging end of the afternoon.  Byron's pointing was canny, not too close to tempt me into shooting, but close enough to make Ben have to work hard.  A combination of poor pointing and a couple of missed tirs left us with a severe boule disadvantage, B&S lying two shots and three still to play, against our two in hand, one for Ben and one for me. Worst still our nearest boule was now 2 metres behind the coche. The natural instinct was to defend our position, but with the boules left in hand I feared we'd simply be shot off the piste, leaving us likely to lose at least 4 shots, but maybe a full house of 6.  So I stopped Ben pointing, and decided to try and kill the end by shooting the coche either dead, or towards the 3 boules which were lying near the back of the piste (my 2 missed tirs and one of Ben's tir casualties).   My shot felt perfect in the air and I moved the coche......an inch sideways.  So it looked like we were set for a disaster.  The perfect shot for Ben to play was to point directly at the coche in the hope that it lay directly on it.  That was a shoot from the other team would either kill the end (maximum points lost restricted to 2) or for the coche to go towards our back boules.

In the end Ben's point didn't quite hit the spot, lying second.  Two missed shoots (one each from Byron and Stephane) saved our bacon and we ended up losing only 2 points.  3-4.  And they were the last points we lost.  Electing to use longer coche lengths than we would normally do caused problems for their pointing.  By contrast our game peaked, pointing 4 shots to a 9.5 metre coche within a two feet radius on the most difficult surface, uphill with right to left swing.  So 13-4 it was, we had some good fortune, but we were pretty much untouchable for the second half of the game.

On to the final, where we fully expected to play Johnny and Robbie.  But no, Alice and Ed had managed to beat them in their semi.   We were again fortunate to win the toss and again select the nasty piste we'd got so used to by now.  Ed and Alice couldn't come to grips with the surface and we won 13-3.

So, it had to wait to the final competition of the year to record my first proper win of the season.  What a relief, and to go home with £50 in my back pocket was very welcome!

The final fling of the season is the Central League Cup, hosted at Inverleith Park on 1st November.  Bovril all round for that one I think, it'll be chilly.

Thanks for reading!

Monday 21 September 2009

Frustration!

Sunday wasn't a practice, totally forgot about our club competition.  A 4 round snake of triples, teams drawn randomly from a hat.  Won this last year and therefore pressure was on to retain it, but it would all depend on the draw....

The draw wasn't bad, drawn with a realtive novice club player and Mags (who can shoot and point) so it looked like we'd be in with a chance. 

We had a tight first game against Sandy, Howard and his son James, who at just 9 years old looks to be a star in the making.  The game was tight, we won 13-11 in the end and we were relieved to get a win.  We won the next 2 games 13-9 and 13-0 respectively to set up a final match against the only other team to win 3 games so far, in the shape of Henry (a ringer from Perth), Mari (in her first season) and old Monty. 

Henry and Mari pointed very well, despite there being a tirade of swearing in Finnish from Mari, most of her shots were on the money - will have to Google these swear words as she will not tell us what they mean!  Monty hit everything which left us in tatters to be honest, we consistently wasted 3 or more boules each end and were therefore on the back foot for the whole match.  Giving up 7 points in the first 2 ends proved to be too big a hurdle to overcome and we lost 13-6 in the end in front of a crowd, the other matches having finished well before ours.

A frustrating afternoon, whilst finishing 2nd is no disgrace, it's been the story of my season.  Inconsistent play is my biggest problem at the moment, which I guess can only be solved by practice.  It's true I have not practiced as much as I should have this year.  With the season drawing to a close rapidly I'll have to be regimented about practice in the winter months to ensure, come April, I can hit the ground running to avoid the usual slow start to the year.

Off to Stirling next weekend for their Open competition.  Hopefully a few of the strong teams will turn out and make it a competitive day.

Thanks for reading.

Friday 18 September 2009

Better late than never!

I've been planning to write a blog about Petanque, and more specifically my experiences of playing Petanque in Scotland for some time. Well I've finally got around to starting it.

The purpose of this blog is not necessarily to promote the sport, or even to explain it's rules (there are many sites for that - start at www.scottishpetanque.org if you are new to the sport), I'd just like to use it to share my experiences.

We've just about come to the end of the season now, the nights are drawing in and it's getting fresher.  Being hardy souls however, Scottish petanque players will no doubt continue to play well into the winter months.  It's been a mixed season really, there have been some successes, notably finishing 3rd in the Scottish Masters this year and qualifying for the national squads for both the Celtic Challenge and Home Nations internationals next year.  But there have been some disappointing moments too, particularly our dismal defence of the Scottish Triples title, and finishing up 3rd the Central Scotland League having lead for most of the season.

I've titled my blog Highs and Lows, there are a fair few of each, which goes to show that practice is vital to continue to improve and maintain consistency.  I'll be going to the club www.inverleithpetanque.org.uk this weekend for more practice, but for now that's all.

Thanks for reading!