Monkstone Pétanque Club

After the disappointing postponements due to the weather which ended in the 2024 President’s Cup not being contested, the competition was back at the Club today for the 2025 edition. 28 members entered the fray to have the honour of winning the trophy on a blustery but fine day.

After Round 1 there was no clear leader with 4 players on +9 and 2 players on +11.

Things were a bit clearer after Round 2 with 5 players on 2 wins but 2 of them were well out in the lead, Carol Maroney on +20  and Roger Green on +21. Was the Cup destined to go to one of these 2?

Round 3 produced a few surprises – Carol & Roger both lost to fall out of contention while Alex Skibinski & Elijah Jeffers with their partners both pulled off huge wins to finish on +23. So here it was, the first tie ever in the President’s Cup with an extra end of singles being called by the Organiser to decide the winner.

The crowd gathered round to watch the encounter – Alex began and put his boule around 40cm from the coche whereupon Elijah moved the coche back and was holding. Alex was short with his second boule but, with his third, he clipped his own boule, pushed it forward and knocked Elijah’s boule away from the coche to finish again about 40cm from the coche but nicely in front. This left Elijah with 2 boules to either outpoint Alex or shoot him out. The adrenalin got to him and he pointed his second boule far too long. The crowd held their breath, Elijah collected himself and, under great pressure, put his last boule about 15cm from the coche to take the prize.

Well done to Elijah, commiserations to Alex and a big thank you to all those who fought their way through the half-marathon road blocks and traffic jams to get the club this morning.

RESULTS

WINNER

Winner Elijah (r), Runner Up Alex (l)

and President Mike Jones (c)

The first ever (annual?) Club Singles were held at the Club on 6 September 2025. There were a total of 28 entries, 20 Men and 8 Ladies (inc 3 Juniors) so both a Men’s and Ladies’ Singles were held.

Both competitions had a 3 round Qualification Stage in the Morning followed by an Elimination Stage in the afternoon. The Men’s Elimination stage was divided into Main, Plate for the top 16 from the morning and a Repechage for the remaining 4.

Ladies Competition

The morning Qualification Stage threw up few surprises but mention should be made of Maddie Bartlett who ranked #4.

The Quarter Final of the Elimination Stage in the afternoon went very much as might have been expected but the later stages saw a very tight finish between Penny Wooller and Amanda Jenkins with Penny squeezing home for a place in the Final. On the Other side of the draw Maddie Bartlett overcame Diana De for the chance to meet Penny in the Final which was another close run thing with Maddie just coming up short at the end.

So the Final has been contested between a newcomer to the Club, although Penny had played the game at league level some years ago, and one of our exciting crop of Juniors.

Perhaps this will encourage more Ladies to come forward next year – in Singles its anybody’s game!

Men’s Competition

Main

In the Main there were no great surprises but mention should be made of Tony Cooper (4), Paul Hawkins (6) and Keith Miller (7) who are all relative newcomers to the game. Unfortunately they all fell at the first Elimination hurdle except Keith Miller who went on to defeat Phil Roberts (2), Claude Razavet (3) and Sean Smith (1), the tournament favourite.

Huge congratulations to Keith for an outstanding performance.

Plate (Qualification Rankings Below are all +8)

In the Plate, those who were Ranked after the morning session from 9 to 16, Tony Martin, an experienced but infrequent player of the game, came through to beat newcomer Lloyd Kinsey in the Final.

Repechage (Qualification Rankings Below are all +16)

The big surprise was to see Tony Smith in the Repechage. As Tony himself put it “I’ve had a S*$% day”. Well done to Keith Thomas for fighting through and taking the Final against Peter Lippett

A big thank-you to Claude Le Razavet who organised the competition – a first at MPC for Claude. Hopefully he is a leader and other members will follow in his footsteps and organise one of the Club competitions. Help is always available if you haven’t done it before.