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.

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!