The 9th Home Nations Petanque Championships took place in Swansea and 8 teams from each nation competed. ECR’s Simon Doble who plays for Victorians PC at Theydon Bois, qualified as England Team 6 but due to a team pulling out were moved up to England 5. Simon said “Any position would have done, as it is the first time I have represented England and was very proud to do so.”

Simon was playing alongside Geoff Booth & Chris Watkins from Kent and after some squad bonding on the Friday night, Saturday morning started with a great atmosphere, and lots of rain!

Team 5 seemed to be having a first-game nightmare playing against Wales Team 4, they were 12-2 down before Richard Baker (Team Manager) gave them a talking to. It obviously worked as they managed to make a comeback and won 13-12. That was the boost they needed for the day as Simon and his team went on to win 5 out of 6 (The 1 loss being against, what on paper should have been their easiest game). But they were happy to end the day on 5 wins, and England also slightly ahead overall, with Wales just behind in second place and Scotland in 3rd.

More rain on Sunday didn’t dampen their spirits as they started with 4 wins from 4 games, but their hardest games of the weekend were still to come, against Wales 1 and 2. The game against Wales 1 was over fairly quickly, losing 13-7 after some great shooting by the Welsh team. Although they lost the game against Wales 2 13-9, it was very close and a great game to end the weekend on.

Team 5 finished on 9 wins from 12 games, and were the best performing England team, as Simon said “it was more than we could have hoped for, and we are certainly proud that we didn’t let the squad down.” England won the competition with 58 wins, Wales were second on 53 and Scotland 3rd with 33.

Simon stated that “all in all it was a fantastic weekend and a great experience, Mike Pegg and especially Richard Baker did a great job of motivating the team and keeping everyone informed all weekend.”