Monkstone Pétanque Club

The second leg of the Winter Friendly against Caerleon RFC PC was played today at Monkstone PC. Mike Jones, Monkstone President, welcomed the visitors from Caerleon and Bernard & Gemma announced the teams for the first round singles. Caerleon had a mountain to climb after the first leg which Monkstone had won by a massive margin of 58 points to 4 but Monkstone had added some less experienced players to their squad to give them the opportunity to play against one of the top clubs in the WPA. With a squad of 17 players, most would play in 2 of the 3 rounds.

Monkstone knew they only needed 5 points to retain the Winter Friendly Trophy and when they took the first three singles the game was up for Caerleon. Caerleon put up a great fight and at the end of the round they were only down 7 games to 5 and 14 points to 10.

In Round 2 Caerleon continued their much improved performance from the 1st leg and the doubles were tied at 3 games and 9 points each. Overall the score was 10 games to 8 and 23 points to 19. Even though the match was lost for Caerleon they had a chance to win the 2nd leg by taking 3 of 4 triples.

The 3rd Round got underway and it soon became obvious that unless there was a complete batting (sorry bouling – still scarred by the Ashes) collapse by Monkstone, Caerleon were not going to get the 3 wins that they needed. With Monkstone taking the first 3 games to finish, Caerleon were hoping to salvage something from the final game but Monkstone just nicked it 13-12 for a clean sweep. This made the final score 14 games to 8 and 43 points to 19 in Monkstone’s favour.

The overall score for the competition was 34 games to 10 and 101 points to 23 to Monkstone.

In our tradition (well we did it in the report of the 1st leg!) of naming and shaming, there were only two players who lost all their games and only two players who were fannied – in fact it was the same 2 players, Keith Nott & Peter Kensett.

It only remained for Gemma to gallantly present the trophy to Monkstone captain, Bernard Adshead.

And so we look forward to next winter’s edition of this well named “Friendly” competition when Caerleon are going to be looking for revenge and trying take the trophy back their club.

Caerleon provided a lovely sunny day for the 1st Leg of our annual (“plague & pestilence permitting” as Tansy put it) Winter Friendly against Caerleon RFC PC. Tansy welcomed all the players and thanked Gemma & Bernard for organising the teams for the day’s play. Tansy noted that Monkstone currently held the Winter Friendly Cup from the last time it was played in 2019/20.

Monkstone had brought a squad of 13 players – would that be unlucky? – after Mike Jones had to drop out due to a bug – not thought to be Covid.

The games got underway with the opening round of singles and it was very quickly apparent that Monkstone were taking a commanding lead in a number of games. This was confirmed at the end of the round with Monkstone taking 10 of the 12 games for a points lead of 20-4.

Worse was to come for Caerleon in Round 2 as Monkstone ripped through their doubles teams and took all of the 6 games for a points haul of 18-0 giving an overall points score at that stage of 38-4.

Caerleon were hoping that things couldn’t get any worse but Monkstone really had their tails up and, in the Round 3 triples, registered another clean sweep taking all 4 games and gaining another 20 points for a final points total of 58-4 and 20 games to 2.

It would be remiss not to expose Roger and Bernard as the 2 ne’er do wells who prevented a total whitewash.

Despite the ease with which Monkstone appeared to win, many of the games were closer than the score would suggest and all the games were played in a friendly attitude and good spirit – most of the spirit was in Gemma’s excellent Christmas cake which she generously provided.

And so its on to the 2nd leg to be held at Monkstone in two weeks time on 23 January 2022.