7th September 2021
At the Inter-regionals
Two Kernow teams and two of Devon players made up a squad for the Challenge division 2 competition which was part of the Petanque England inter-regional contests held at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, over the weekend of 4-5 September.
The event took place on the Melton cattle market site, with temporary playing surfaces of road planings laid over the underlying concrete paving. It was . . . . interesting: some places were very soft, and many a boule stopped dead on landing; others were very hard, with only a thin layer of topping over the concrete, and a dropping boule might bounce several feet! All the boules came home with a plentiful coating of tarmac. It was, of course, the same for all players, but the surfaces were certainly challenging in terms of what we usually play on.
In terms of results, it was not the two south-west regions’ finest hour: overall the squad won 11 games of the 40 played over the two days. By comparison, the two top participants in the division 2 Challenge event, the Welsh Petanque Association and Anglia region, came home with 29 and 28 wins respectively.
Kernow 2 – Andy Rose, Pete English, Mark Hypponen and Roy Pemberton – were top team in the squad, winning five of their ten games. Kernow 1 (Colin ‘Boot’ Booth, Paul Rundle, Susan Williamson and Graeme Kirkham) won three with two narrow losses, going down 13-12 to Great Western 1 in the first round on Saturday and losing 13-11 to Anglia 1 later in the day.
The Devon players took three wins over the weekend. Team 2 – Ged and Ann Barton with Henry Pickett – had two, with a narrow 13-11 loss to a junior team in the last game on Sunday, and Team 3 (Lesley McCallum, Costa Drakatos and Ian Ramsay) came away with one win.
Full results are on the Petanque England website: https://www.petanque-england.uk/…/IRChallengeDiv2…
A big “thank you” to our squad manager, Sue Hardy, for all her work over the weekend, and to the Kernow travelling supporter, Enid Rose! A very big thanks also to all involved in preparing and staging the event at Melton Mowbray.
Plenty to reflect on after the weekend: we certainly need to look out for some new surfaces to try out and for help in developing techniques to master them.
Lots to learn!(Photographs of some of the squad members in action by Susan Williamson and Graeme Kirkham HERE)