The seven deadly sins of Petanque - The seventh sin:
- “Shall we play?” asks the sinner.
- “No, let’s practise!” says the winner.
Of course, most petanque players enjoy “having a game”. The danger is that you never practise and develop your game, remaining at a plateau. This is a real danger if you only ever play with the same group of players and always on the same terrain.
Practising the basics, rolling, half-lob, high-lob, aiming for the landing spot, shooting boules, are important to help develop consistency in your play and to become an all round player, capable of pointing or shooting as the game requires.
You can use “social” games to practise, ideally in consultation with your team-mates. If you mainly point, practise shooting instead. If you mainly play rolling shots, play lobbing shots instead. If you usually play short ends, play long ends instead, etc.
However, games won’t always give the opportunity to practise all the different shots. Sometimes it’s a good idea to spend 20 minutes practising one type of shot, e.g. playing between 2 blocking boules, or spinning around an obstacle, shooting a back boule, etc.
There are lots of different Skills & Drills that you can use to provide a fun and varied practise programme. It doesn’t have to be deadly dull!
Why not devise a set of Club Standards for pointing and shooting and award Gold, Silver & Bronze medals to players who meet the targets. It’s fun to have a Best Player award and a Most Improved Player. Best Newcomer and similar categories offer everybody the chance to succeed.
Many years ago there was no way of getting your pictures online unless you knew someone with a homepage. Or you mailed them to petanque.org, and we'd put it on the web for you. But nowadays nobody does this thing anymore, there are thousands of ways to get your images online, and our pictures-section is about as dry as the sahara. So we have had to make some changes
Lars Refn was one of the founders of the Copenhagen Petanque Club in Denmark. He is also an illustrator, and has produces a vast number of t-shirts with petanque as the theme over the years.
A positive newsflash fron Chiltern - the young ones have started playing petanque!
We often get questions about when you are to old to play petanque. Some say 90, some 100 and some 120..
A report from Tim Truluck in Charente, France.
Petanque.org integrates with flickrPetanque.org is 10 years old! Illegal Petanque ExposedA Petanque calendar for 2008Hot club petanqe and Le mondial la marseillaise a petanque 2007Big balls of steel and a tiny wooden onePeterhof Maier cup - play a petanque tournament in Russia!New link policyPetanque blog feeds updatedPetanque in the Ukraine
Flickr ideas (5 )Drawing the circle after dead jack (4 )Where to play petanque in Thailand (10 )Enquiry please? (2 )Playing Indoos (2 )Illegal Petanque Exposed (5 )most difficult shot/throw? (5 )Nice one! (1 )Terrain for SANDY soils (Florida) (52 )petanque surface aggregates (2 )Right size boule (3 )Size (1 )Article 37 – Incorrect Behaviour, (5 )YouTube has some great clips (1 )2nd boule played although 1st one made it (7 )
