Local stars help secure promotion
Unexpected sporting results are in the news at the moment - and not just in tennis. Last weekend witnessed a hugely impressive result at the Petanque England Interregional Championship. The Great Western Region topped Division 2 and won promotion.
The backbone of the team included some very familiar City of Bath Petanque Club faces wearing the orange shirts of GWR. The team from Great Western Region approached the Inter Regional Competition with a reasonable amount of confidence but little did the team realise how successful they would be this year.
The Inter-regionals take place on an annual basis and bring together around 700 petanque players representing their individual regions. A time for serious competition but also a time for renewing old friendships and making new friends.
For the first time in many years the competition was organised and
managed by Petanque England in the central location of Melton Mowbray with teams coming from as far afield as Kernow, the Isle of Wight and Yorkshire. The location, a large cattle Market, provided pistes both under cover and on the car park with numerous food vendors available to satisfy even the most discerning diner.
Play got under way early Saturday morning, with an overnight break, continuing through until 7pm on Sunday evening followed by the presentations. Each team played ten matches over the weekend, with each match lasting anywhere between 30 minutes to two
hours. It was an exhausting weekend but an experience by both long-time campaigners and those new to the competition.
At the end of the weekend, GWR had managed to win the Division Two Championship with a 61 per cent win ratio, six matches clear of Yorkshire. Team Six from City of Bath had the most wins across the division with nine and a point differential of 60 points coming top out of the 48 teams in the division. Additionally, Alex Moriarty at his first Inter-regional won the junior shooting competition, an excellent achievement for someone so young.