Monkstone Pétanque Club

In cooperation with International Humanitarian Games Association (IHGA)

As we are all aware, this year has been to say the least a very strange one.  Covid-19 has curtailed many of our normal activities and has been responsible for several of our members being “confined to barracks”.

At the beginning of July this year the WPA received an invitation to take part in the very first World Pétanque Offline Cup (WPOC).  This is a completely new concept that has come about as a direct result of the travel restrictions etc. caused by Covid-19 and consists of Junior and Senior (male and female) categories in a modified shooting competition consisting of two very different disciplines that had to be filmed and submitted to the organising committee:-

1. Standard Shooting (with some modifications) – shots at:- single boule, boule between two boules and at the coche, one shot at each from distances of 7.5m and 9.5m.
2. Parthian Shooting (trick shot) – a trick shot from a minimum of 8.5m at a target boule which could involve throwing over obstacles, from moving/stationary platforms etc.

The scoring was the standard precision shooting format of:-

Boule

• 0 – Miss.
• 1 – Target boule hit but does not leave the circle.
• 3 – Target boule and thrown boule leave the circle
• 5 – Target boule leaves the circle but the thrown boule stays in the circle (Carreaux).

Coche

• 0 – Miss.
• 3 – Coche hit but stays within the circle.
• 5 – Coche hit and stops outside of the circle.

An additional twist to the scoring for both Standard and Parthian shooting was there were points available for several other factors such as:-

• The duration of the video (it had to be no more than 239 seconds, 3 mins 59secs.) with no editing.
• The quality of the video.
• The wearing of masks/face coverings, reciting the required statement of “My name is ………. From the country of ……………, BOULES SPORTS FANS – WASH YOUR HANDS”
• With the addition that in the Parthian there were also an additional five points available for the “Beauty of the location”

The FIPJP and International Humanitarian Games Association (IHGA) put this together for several reasons, one of which being to show the International Olympic Committee that with the likelihood Covid-19 will be with us for a while, unlike many other sports we can still hold competitions all be it in a different format.

An email was sent out to all WPA members along with posts on the WPA website and Facebook page inviting members to put their names forward (there was no limit on the number of participants from any country), the original invite was included as an attachment and contained a full description of the disciplines and the rules).  By the closing date of 19 July there were only three WPA members that had shown an interest, Michelle & Gareth Spencer from Monkstone PC along with Derek Jones the WPA Director of Development who plays for Pontyclun. There had been a couple of other WPA members who had mentioned taking part but unfortunately they didn’t send their documents by the cut-off and as a result, Wales had to go forward with just three players.

We had confirmation that our entries had been accepted on the 20 July closely followed by the lists of competitors and countries. 

Considering this was the very first event of this type to ever be held there was a reasonable number of entries (47 in the Senior Women’s and 65 in the Senior Men’s) from countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, Netherlands, Canada, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Wales and Iran who were the “host county”.

The competition was held from the 3–9 August but a couple of days before it was due to start we had an amended set of rules sent through.  The original format was using one camera to record each competitor throwing their boules, a format that we were quite used to as I’ve been taking part in online “live-streamed” shooting and pointing competitions since the start of lockdown.

However, the amended rules said that we had to use two cameras and that the competitor had to be covered by a camera at all times (each competitor was responsible for throwing and retrieving their own boules along with resetting the target area).  This was not a great issue apart from working out the camera placement to ensure we could meet the new criteria. 

We also found out on the 2 August that we had to complete all of the disciplines and have them sent in to the organising committee by 15:00 on Monday 3 August. This did cause a little panic as Michelle and I were both working on the Monday and as a result we didn’t get a chance to complete the Parthian (trick shot) discipline due to the time constraints.  Thankfully, Derek managed to get his first Parthian round in, more about that later.

After the mad rush to complete the Precision Shooting we then had technical issues uploading the videos to a platform called “Telegraph” which was the platform chosen by the organisers (a platform we’d never even heard of prior to this competition).  This was not helped by the fact that everything was in Iranian and we had to rely on the auto-translate function and the wonders of the modern communications network but perseverance paid off and our entries were away into the ether.

On the Wednesday we had the results of the first round of the Precision Shooting and they were:-

• Derek Jones 13^th place – Senior Men’s
• Michelle Spencer 27^th place – Senior Women’s
• Gareth Spencer 32^nd place – Senior Men’s

As only the top eight from each group were to go through to the next round, this was the end of the road for the three of us.  There were only six points between Derek in 13^th position and me in 32^nd place highlighting how close the scores were in the top half of the table.

However, as they say “Every cloud has a silver lining” and our silver lining was Derek in the Parthian (trick shot) competition as he was in 5^th place and going through to the second round.

Not expecting to go through Derek had to hurriedly come up with a second trick shot, so he decided to throw a boule over his car at a boule balanced on a small cone.  He pulled off the shot but unfortunately it was only enough to secure him a final placing of 8^th but that is 8^th in the world and 1^st in Europe.

Throughout the competition we also had to wear masks which are a distraction in themselves and were quite uncomfortable in the heat.

It was a great experience and something that will go down in the history of World Pétanque.  The amusing part is that having taken part in what was an official FIPJP competition, it says on the WPA website that along with our World positions of 13^th, 27^th and 32^nd in the Precision Shooting there were also our European positions which are:-

Senior Men’s

• Derek Jones – 1^st
• Gareth Spencer – 2^nd

Senior Women’s

• Michelle Spencer – 2^nd

We are well aware that this is an artificial ranking but as they say “You’ve got to be in it to win it” and we have now gone down in the history of World Pétanque.

Gareth Spencer