The English Petanque Association Titles weekend took place at Bury St.Edmunds and Eastern Region players put on a good performance in all three competitions.
In the singles there were 83 entries including the reigning champion, our own Sofiane Lachani. Unfortunately Lachani was not on top form but still won 4 out of 5 games and finished in 8th place. The title went to Rachid Hannache from London.
Trevor Blows from Stisted played some of the best petanque of his life to sit in tenth place at lunch with 3 wins. Despite playing superbly to lead 8-4 against Great Britain player Herve Bavazzano from West Midlands, Blows went on to lose his next 2 games but finished a very creditable 17th and was our second highest placed player.
Alan Brazier finished 24th one place ahead of Simon Doble in 25th, with 3 wins apiece. Filippa-Jane Tanburn finished with 1 win in 74th place and David Cracknell in 76th.

The following day was the doubles tournament which obviously suited our players as at the halfway stage we were holding the top three places.
73 teams entered the competition and at the end of the qualifying rounds ECR’s Keith Flack and Dean Little were top of the pile and unbeaten. This gave them a semi final against Jerome Rousseau (W.Mids) & singles winner Rachid Hannache (London) which they duly won 13-5.
In the final Little & Flack met team mate Sofiane Lachani who was playing with Nic Baxter from Kent. They dispatched Howard & Hutchings a Northern/Chiltern combination in the semis 13-6.
Little & Flack rounded off an excellent days play with a 13-8 win over two very experienced Great Britain players and thoroughly deserve their title of English doubles champions.
Of the other ECR players Simon Doble & Frank Britt finished 6th with 4 wins, Trevor Blows & Lorne Gibson 41st, 2 wins and David Cracknell & Filippa-Jane Tanburn 1 win and 64th place.

In the mixed doubles there was another good entry of 59 teams but only 2 representing the Eastern Counties Region. Of these undoubtedly the best performance was from Alan Brazier & his partner Sharon Hunt who were lying in 4th place with 4 wins at the halfway stage. Hunt, although new to the sport, was pointing with the consistency of a far more experienced player and once Brazier found his shooting accuracy they were storming. It was only a 13-6 loss to eventual finalists Miles Gooda (Chiltern) & Deborah Elcombe (Southern) that undid them and saw them finish in a brilliant 6th place.
The other ECR team of Clare Courtney & Chris Parr had 3 wins and finished 15th. The event was won by Royston Williams & Clare Brooks from East Midlands.