Southsea Open Triples – Southern Counties Petanque

On Saturday 11th May, Southsea Petanque Club held their Open Triples event for the second year at the new terrain. This year, beach terrains were used in order that the maximum amount of teams could be raised from last year’s 12. In the end there was a disappointing entry of just 14 teams, but they included (amongst some other strong entries) three inter-regional-entered teams who were having a run-out before next week’s qualifiers.

Out of those three, Cobb-On 2 (Ali/Mike/Matt) fell in the morning league stages, but bounced back to win the Plate competition in the afternoon. Paula’s Pals (Paula/Robert/Lesley) won the main consolage, and best result of the three were Leftovers (again) comprising David, Marc and Rod, who reached the main semi-final.

The 3 of Us from Muscliff (Mick/Pat/Leo) won the Plate consolage.

The Main Final was fought out between Southampton (Liam/Karen/Jamie) and Southern Pinnacles (Dawn/Peter/Andy) from Southsea. Southampton won the toss and decided to take Pinnacles to the new beach terrain where they had just beaten Leftovers (again). So there was to be no home advantage for the Southsea team. Luckily for them, the beach played very similarly to the ground at their bandstand promotion event a few weeks earlier so it wasn’t too much of a shock.

In the end the ground suited the mainly pointing team as opposed to the shooter heavy team, and Southern Pinnacles managed to go one step further than last year’s runners-up spot.

Competition report by Obut-Wan-Kenobi – Southsea’s roving reporter