Hi people the picture on the downloads page

GaiSoleil_198

Looking at the line on the ground and the size of the balls are they playing bocce?

What do people think?

As the owner of this card (I am also the administrator of the postcards section of petanque.org) I can assure you that it is petanque. First of all, it is mentionned at the backside of the card and secondly, if you looks well, you can see that the size of the boules are the normal size of petanque boules. The difference in colours (bocce is played with synthetic coloured boules is due to the shadows and the difference between rusted and and rust-free boules. The line is a normal marking line between two games. And also very important, the player (obviously a shooter) has two feet beside each other on the ground, and that is not done in bocce or boule lyonnaise!

Thanks for the information Jac I assumed that petanque is usually payed on open ground in this type of situation.

Looking at the way the person about to throw I would agree it is very petanque like.

While I am not that familiar with bocce there certainly is a group of Italians in Adelaide Australia that are adamant that bocce is played with metal balls and the plastic balls that are commonly sold as bocce balls are only for recreational use.

The original post was only an observation please don’t think I was being critical.

Regards Don

Hi Don,

Bocce in Italian means just boule and in Italy you can distinguish three types of games of boules: petanque, sport-boules (boule lyonnaise) and raffa (that is called 'bocce' in the US and on other places in the world). Sport-boules (and of course petanque) are played with metal boules, raffa always with synthetic boules! So, these plastic boules are not just for recreational use, although there are cheaper plastic raffa boules just for fun. And of course, there are cheap plastic boules for petanque, especially for young kids. Have a look at the site of one of Italians most important manufacturies: http://www.boccecast.com/.