Monkstone Pétanque Club

Yesterday, Sunday 7 April, saw the biggest competition ever held at Monkstone Petanque Club – 68 boulers took part in the Open Doubles with all 16 lanes in use simultaneously for the first time.

The rain promised for most of the day did not arrive until around 4pm much to the relief of everybody. We even had small glimpses of the sun.

The competition format in the morning was 32 teams divided into 8 pools of 4 for a round-robin. After lunch, the top of each group went into the Gold elimination competition, second in each group to Silver, third to Bronze and fourth to Tin.

The competition was fierce but friendly and whilst there were some expected winners there were others that came through to take a prize in their section of the competition. Special mention should be made of 9 year old Jack Harris who, partnering his father Richard, won the Bronze competition.

Monkstone Petanque Club wishes thank all those supported the club by entering the competition and made it a truly memorable event.

Play in Full Swing

The Full Results

The morning Pool Stage final rankings

GOLD Elimination Group

SILVER Elimination Group

BRONZE Elimination Group

TIN Elimination Group

The Winners & Runners Up

Mike Jones, Monkstone President, presented the prizes to the Winners & Runners up (except for the Tin Competition where, for obvious reasons, the Organiser had to step in!)

                WINNERS                                                    RUNNERS UP

Tin Competition

     Phil Roberts & Mike Jones                                  Linda & Alan Thomas

Bronze Competition

       Richard & Jack Harris                                Sue Foster & Gail Brooksbank

Silver Competition

     Roger Green & Alex Skibinski                  Didier Mack & Daniel Rawling

Gold Competition

     Sean Smith & Ian Bailey                            Jake Caston & Stewart Spencer

……………….. and Finally

The Organiser at work

The Club’s annual Easter Egg Melee took place on Sunday. The promised rain managed to hold off until the competition finished.

30 Members turned out to try to win the stupendous Easter Egg prizes on offer. The Organiser promised a special twist this year, which would be revealed at the end of the competition.

Round one, as might have been predicted, produced 15 winners with Paul Wilcockson & Colin Burfoot in the lead on +11 closely followed by Francis Ryan & Robin Ralph on +10. Round 2 began to sort out the potential winners with only 8 players on 2 wins – Paul Wilcockson was in the lead on +16 followed by Francis Ryan & Margaret Dyer on +12.

So it was into the final round and unfortunately Paul & Francis couldn’t maintain their momentum as both lost and finishing on 2 wins. Only 3 players managed 3 wins and it was El Pres himself who came up on the rails to win with +18, followed my Margaret Dyer on +15 and Keith Nott on +8. in fourth place was Sean Smith on 2 wins and +14.

The 4 winners received 5 cream eggs (1^st). 4 eggs (2^nd), 3 eggs (3^rd) and 2 eggs (4^th) with all the rest of players receiving 1 egg.

It was then that the Organiser revealed that if anyone had a half white and half white egg it was worth £10,000 curtesy of Cadbury’s.

Unfortunately, nobody found the elusive two tone egg!!

RESULTS

PHOTOS

The Organiser, Bernard Adshead, presents the winner, Mike Jones, with the Easter Egg Melee trophy

The top 4, Keith Nott (3rd), Margaret Dyer (2nd), Mike Jones (1st) and Sean Smith (4th)

The competition in full swing

This week we came to the final round of the 2023/24 Super League. The winners were already confirmed with Marlins taking the title with 2 weeks to spare. There was still much to play for for the other teams – four teams were in contention to finish in second place and Meerkats were hoping to get off the bottom of the table.

On Tuesday Meerkats played a hard fought draw with Mammoths 2-2 [43-38], a result which didn’t satisfy either side. It meant that Meerkats were anchored to the bottom and, whilst Mammoths moved into second place, they were unlikely to retain that position after Wednesday’s matches.

Wednesday saw champions Marlins take on Mavericks and slump to a surprising 1-3 [30-48] defeat. This took Mavericks into second place although they could still be pipped by Mustangs if they could beat Mercenaries in the final match of the season.

Mustangs got off to a great start winning the first two games. Could they take one more game to get the win they needed for second place. Not sure what was in the half-time coffee but Mercenaries came out firing on all cylinders and took both games in the second half to earn a creditable draw 2-2 [42-37]. So in the end Mavericks took the second spot thanks to their great win over Marlins.

Well played to all who took part in the Super League and congratulations to Marlins – worthy champions.

FINAL TABLE

President Mike Jones presents the cup to Marlin’s captain, Ash Seath