Archive for General

Winter Catch Up

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.

Tony Newton RIP

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.

RIP Tony – we all miss you.

Playing Calendar

Following requests made at the recent AGM, the club 2023 Playing Calendar for has been updated on the website and posted on the notice board in the club house.

We’re Back

Members may have noticed that there has been a distinct lack of updating, new posts etc on the website for the last 2 months.

What you won’t know is, even though it was possible to access the site, it was not possible for your Webmaster to access the “back” of the site to carry out updates, post club news etc etc.

This post is evidence that we are back up an running and your Webmaster wishes to thank Tony Smith for his invaluable work in identifying and sorting the problem.

Over the next week or so I hope to catch up with the updating and a consolidated post about what has been happening over the last 2 months