Monkstone Pétanque 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.

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.

It’s ours to loose ……… !!!!!!

RESULTS

The postponed 2nd leg of our annual Friendly v Royal Wootton Bassett PC was played at RWB on Thursday 18 September 2025. All those taking part were relieved to find that the fixture was still taking place after the atrocious weather the previous day. In fact it turned out to cloudy with very warm sunny interludes.

The match was played in the usual format of 2 rounds of 6 doubles and 2 rounds of 4 triples. Unusually RWB chose to start with the triples which were then followed by the doubles after lunch.

MPC had a healthy lead of 13 games to 7 after the first leg, but realised that RWB would be looking to overturn that on their home gravel.

The 2 rounds of triples each finished with 2 games all, so MPC had retained their 6 game advantage, after which lunch provided by RWB was taken.

The first round of doubles finished 3-3 so RWB would have to win all 6 of the games in the second round of the doubles. Fortunately for MPC they came up slightly short by taking 4 of the games to MPC’s 2 thus reducing the overall deficit to 4 games with MPC taking the overall honours by 22 games to 18.