The club recently hosted two Elderfit sessions for around 10 or 12 visitors, most of whom were strangers to the game of petanque. They enjoyed the experience very much, but, in both sessions, the heat got the better of everyone and it was agreed to curtail the session for health reasons.
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Our club has previously hosted Elderfit events so we were pleased to see them return and we hope to continue such sessions in the future but hopefully in cooler conditions.
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Thanks to Roger, Mike, Spencer, Vickie & Bernard for helping organise the sessions and supervising the play and thanks to Gareth for bringing his Elderfitters to the Club.
MPC Open Doubles were held on 12 April 2026. For the second year running, with 32 teams competing, we had the maximum number that we can accomodate on our terrain.
Your correspondent was not present on the day so I haven’t got details of the morning qualification pools. The afternoon knockout results are shown below. The first number is the ranking after the morning session.
The prize giving was conducted by Keith Miller, MPC member, on behalf of the Club Executive.
A big thank you to all those all those who helped in the running of the competition in the absence of the usual organiser and in particular those from other clubs who helped to make it a smooth run competition.
From the WhatsApp comments after the competition it seems everybody had a great time. We hope to see you back for next year’s competition on 11 April 2027 (prov). If you can’t wait till then the we have the MPC Open Triples on 21 June 2026.
Your scribe has been busy over the last few months with membership issues both for the Club and WPA. As a result publishing news from the Club has been a bit thin on the ground so here is a brief catch up of what has been happening.
November 2025
The month ended with the return leg of the annual Winter Friendly against Caerleon RFC PC. Monkstone had taken a commanding lead in the first leg (reported previously).
Unfortunately the lead turned out to be not commanding enough and after the combined scores were totted up, Caerleon had won by the tightest of margins.
December 2025
This highlight of this month was the annual Club Xmas Melee which was followed by a “bring a plate” lunch in the Penylan Club.
The Xmas Melee was won by Ian Campbell RIP who sadly passed away a few days ago.
The winners of the December Club 100 draw were:
Xmas Bonus
Ros Goddard
£200.00
1
Geoffrey Keast
£100.50
2
Chris “Buzz” Rees
£33.50
3
Peredur John
£16.75
January 2026
The winners of the January Club 100 draw were:
1
John Edwards
£102.00
2
John Barnes
£34.00
3
Gareth Bartlett
£17.00
February 2026
The winners of the February Club 100 draw were:
1
Ian Campbell
£102.00
2
Ann Maries Sheridan
£34.00
3
Gareth Bartlett
£17.00
Ian Campbell RIP
25 February 2026 brought the sad and completely unexpected death of club member Ian Campbell RIP. Ian was a good petanque player and a popular member of the Club. He will be sadly missed.
A group of Monkstone Members today paid their final respects and said goodbye to Tony Newton at Thornhill Crematorium. Tony was a well loved member of the club from 2018 to 2023 always cheerful with a positive attitude – and could he point!
Sadly, he succumbed to the dreaded Alzheimer’s along with other health issues which forced him to resign from the club at the end of 2023. The memory problems were, however, the cause of some lighter moments especially when, during a 3 Round melee, he would disappear after Round 2, only to be found in the bar with a pint because he thought he had finished. And if you notice the big green Exit buttons on the wall of the main clubhouse lobby, then think of Tony. They were installed as, on numerous occasions, he pressed the fire alarm button instead of the (not so obvious) magnetic door releases.
The first leg of the annual Winter Friendly against Caerleon RFC PC took place today with Monkstone seeking to wrestle back the trophy after 3 successive wins by Caerleon with a good start in the home leg.
After the 12 singles matches honours were even at 6 games [12 Points] each which was not the start MPC were looking for. I would like to be able to say that the captain gave the most rousing, encouraging speech ever before the doubles round but something stirred the dragon in them and they took all 6 doubles [18 Points] which is possibly the first time either team has won all the games in one of the rounds. It nearly didn’t happen as, in the last game, Vickie & Bernard were 10-5 down when they heard that MPC had won all 5 doubles that had finished. Not wishing to have the finger pointed at them as the only losers, they fashioned a surprising come back to win 13-11.
So its was on to the triples – could Monkstone increase their 18 point lead to take into the 2nd leg in 2 weeks time. It was not to be, however, and with 2 wins [10 points] each, the final score was 40-22 to Monkstone.
So with an 18 point lead in the bag, Monkstone move on to the 2nd leg at Caerleon on 30 November. Its not over till ………….. as the saying goes, but its a good position to be in.
