222nd Post

You've been framed !!!!

Hope you have enough ink for that score, Nigel!

Mike, to one side....considering his options.....

The paraphernalia of Boules......minus the dagger!

Welcome back....Kitty in action.  Newcomer Gerry learning from a master.

Lucky ye weren't standing there on Thursday night last when the tree fell!!!

On a dull, humid morning we had a turnout of eighteen players.  We welcomed Kitty back and Gerry had his first full outing having been present each Thursday evening and helping to clean / rake the pistes before play.  Both of them played very well.

In Shay's absence Richie and Sean playing together scored 50 apiece but Nigel has slipped into the  lead on 152.  Richie and John are his closest rivals.

NAMES	Week 4
Date:	Wed. 14/08/19
Game:	G.1	G.2	G.3	G.4	Tot.	R.T.
Bridget Holland	13	11			24	84
Brogan Whittle	12	13			25	81
Catherine Andrews	11	13	0	8	32	131
Colm Masterson					0	52
Dave Hughes					0	0
Dolores Ryan					0	0
Don O Riordan					0	30
Eileen Donnellan	8	5	7	3	23	130
Eilish Fitzpatrick	3	5	5		13	61
Jeanette Feeney					0	64
John Campbell	13	8	13	5	39	140
John Oman					0	0
Kitty Rowley	13	13	5		31	31
Liam Ryan					0	0
Maeve Linnane					0	88
Maureen Deane					0	0
Michael Daly					0	32
Mike Deegan	11	13	0	8	32	122
Nigel O Mahony	13	8	13	5	39	152
Pat Donnelly					0	32
Patricia Fitzpatrick	13	11			24	103
Richard Ryan	13	13	13	11	50	141
Sean Mahon	13	13	13	11	50	96
Shay Coyne					0	117
Sheila Nolan	12	13			25	138
Tom Donnellan	13	13	5		31	133
Tom Sheedy	3	5	5		13	68
Tony Watkins	8	5	7	3	23	96
Yvonne Reid	3	5	5		13	86
Gerry Wolfe	13	13	5		31	31

An interesting article from ...........The Telegraph..........August 2019

Pétanque for pensioners? French youth go ballistic for boules

French youth have fallen for pétanque amid a retro revival CREDIT:  GAMMA-RAPHO/ HANS SILVESTER

•  Henry Samuel, paris

10 AUGUST 2019 • 2:05PMOOnce the preserve of pastis-sipping retirees of Provence, the French pastime of pétanque, or boules, has become a surprise hit among the country’s youth amid a fashion for all things retro and a desire for simple, “authentic” pleasures, say experts.
Among France’s 302,000 registered boules players, some eight per cent are now “minors”, according to the FFPJP, the French Federation of Pétanques and Jeu Provençal - a sister sport.
“The young trend has taken off,” according to FFPJP spokesman Clément Meneghin, who said one of the key reasons was that pétanque is now played in PE sessions in many schools.
Schools are not the only breeding ground for future pétanque players; boules clubs in French universities are all the rage while many young workers slope off to a gravelly “terrains” during their lunch breaks to relax.
“Contrary to many group sports, pétanque brings together girls and boys with no pre-conceived ideas about the game,” said Mr Meneguin.
“We see more and more (young people) in competitions, Nicolas Fourrage, 20, a serious bouliste, told Le Parisien newspaper.

Pétanque appeals to the young as girls and boys can play together, say experts CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES CONTRIBUTOR/ANDIA

“After its democratisation in the 1980s and 1990s, pétanque has spread to other tribes since the 2000s, namely young people and ‘bobos’ (bourgeois-bohemians),” said Hervé Rofritsch, CEO of Boule bleue, the world’s oldest boules manufacturer.
Paris in the summer is awash with groups of young pétanque players lobbing boules and sipping beers into the night.
The gentle chink of metal balls on sand has become a familiar sound at Paris-Plages, the summer beach festival along the banks of the river Seine, but also in the Tuileries gardens and many other designated “terrains” around the French capital.
Formalised in 1907 in Marseille, pétanque consists of throwing metal balls at a smaller wooden ball known as the “jack”.
“All you need to know is how to throw the boule. It’s not complicated,” said Clotaire, an eight-year player at Paris-Plages taught by her grandparents in southern France.
For Patrick André of the Boule museum of Marseille, the surge in popularity among the young is linked to a trend for all things retro.
“Young people want to get back to authenticity, to simple things,” he said.
According to writer Jean-Laurent Cassely: “Today, everything that is popular, a bit old-fashioned or even out-of-fashion is considered authentic as long as you can revisit it according to today’s cultural norms."
“For a young person from a big city, pétanque appears almost exotic.”

Paris in the summer is awash with groups of young pétanque players lobbing boules and sipping beers into the night CREDIT:  ANITA POUCHARD SERRA/ ANITA POUCHARD SERRA

Sami, 23, an employee the Vedettes du Pont-Neuf, boats that ply the Seine, said: “Pétanque seduces the young because it symbolises relaxation and sociability. There’s no tension.”
It has even been hailed by one Buddhist master as a great tool for meditation.
However, recent events in the upper echelons of the game suggest that it can be far from genteel.
In 2014, a team from northern France pulled out of the world boules championship, an annual international event held in Marseille, after claiming to receive death threats from local rivals who promised to “rip off their heads” unless they let them win.
The sport also suffered from a spate of “bouliganism” - players coming to blows over a game - often fuelled by heavy alcohol consumption.
In January, the world of pétanque was rocked by accusations that Belgian players use cocaine to give them a performance-enhancing edge in international matches.
More than 20 million French people play pétanque occasionally, with about 400,000 regular contestants in 7,000 clubs. France had hoped it would be declared an Olympic sport in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics, to no avail.
The game is also catching on in England, which now has nearly 200 clubs, according to Pétanque England, formerly the English Pétanque Association.

221st Post

On a walk in the park today and following the rain and wind last night an ivy-covered tree that had previously been uprooted that was propped up against a growing, larger tree fell to ground between Piste 2 and 3.
Luckily we weren't playing at the time though coincidentally Catherine, on last Wednesday, commented on the precarious state of the tree little knowing that within a couple of days it was to fall.
The incident has heightened our awareness of our vulnerability under trees that have had little or no attention over the years.
We need to do an audit of the trees that overhang the play areas and bring the situation to the attention of the park authorities.
While the trees provide shelter from rain, wind and intense sunlight they are potentially lethal in stormy conditions, especially when in full leaf, over some of the pistes.
As part of a proposal to upgrade the Boules area we will start by asking that the surrounding trees be pruned.

Evidence of the previous night's rain....

The 40 ft. tree on the ground....

Some of the debris on Piste 3.

For scale purposes only!!!!

220th Post

We had eighteen players today.  It rained briefly and threatened even more, but thankfully the deluge never came to pass.  The scoring, judging by the sound effects emanating from various courts, was interesting to say the least.  We replaced the missing ring by ordering online through Decathlon.
Shay has crept into a slight lead over Sheila and Nigel, after week three.
Our thanks to Gerry Wolfe, a recent, regular Thursday evening player who has raked the pistes voluntarily even before Brogan arrived today!
He is very keen to play outside of the Thursday session and he has been seen practicing on other occasions.  We have decided that on Wednesdays, if we don't have 24 players that Gerry, a former double Minor All-Ireland Medal winner with Dublin 1955/1956, will be able to join us in this session.

NAMES	Week 3
Date:	Wed. 07/08/19
Game:	G.1	G.2	G.3	G.4	Tot.	R.T.
Bridget Holland					0	60
Brogan Whittle	13	7	5		25	56
Catherine Andrews	7	13	13		33	99
Colm Masterson					0	52
Dave Hughes					0	0
Dolores Ryan					0	0
Don O Riordan	1	13	9	7	30	30
Eileen Donnellan	13	12	13	3	41	107
Eilish Fitzpatrick	6	2	13	2	23	48
Jeanette Feeney					0	64
John Campbell	1	13	9	7	30	101
John Oman					0	0
Kitty Rowley					0	0
Liam Ryan					0	0
Maeve Linnane	0	10	3	1	14	88
Maureen Deane					0	0
Michael Daly					0	32
Mike Deegan	13	13	10	10	46	90
Nigel O Mahony	13	12	13	3	41	113
Pat Donnelly					0	32
Patricia Fitzpatrick	6	2	13	2	23	79
Richard Ryan	13	13	13	0	39	91
Sean Mahon	0	10	3	1	14	46
Shay Coyne	13	13	10	10	46	117
Sheila Nolan	13	12	13	3	41	113
Tom Donnellan	7	13	13		33	102
Tom Sheedy	1	13	9	7	30	55
Tony Watkins	13	13	13	0	39	73
Yvonne Reid	13	7	5		25	73

Photos from today's play............

Sheila leans back to admire her work....."Take a leaf out of my book..."

Is Piste 3 a 'Fools Paradise?'  Honestly, everybody was aiming for the cosh....

Tony....aka Neil Armstrong....checking out the craters on Piste 4....

Who said ''''It's only a game.....!'

Below is an interesting article from the Irish time almost 10 years ago.....................................

Bushy Boules

Sat, Aug 29, 2009, 01:00

ANGELA RUTTLEDGE

FITNESS:Twice a week, Bushy Park in Dublin comes alive with the gentle clonk of steel boules, as the pétanque club gathers to play a simple, low-cost game that different generations can enjoy together

‘SHE IGNORED ME,’ says Pierre Di Pizzo, who met his future wife Breffney, a Terenure native, in Tahiti when they both worked cruise ships in the Caribbean. Breffney’s strategy worked – France captured Terenure back in 1986. Now their battleground is Bushy Park, where they play pétanque with their children, Jack (14) and Emily (13), every Saturday.

Pétanque is an old Gallic term meaning “feet together”, and the game was derived from boules in 1907, when a player named Jules Lenoir, who suffered with rheumatism, requested that he be allowed throw his boules from a standing position, rather than taking steps and then throwing. Another strategist, King Henry VIII, is said to have banned his archers from playing boules as it was too distracting.

And indeed, it is very relaxed at the Bushy Park piste (the gravelly pen where the game is played). It’s a quiet space where the only sounds are tennis balls being batted back and forth on the nearby courts, the clonk of the steel boules, and the low chatter of the pétanque players.

Saturdays can be a bit of a war zone in many households, bottle bank and dry-cleaning tasks wrestling with hobbies and other worthy activities. Breffney Di Pizzo’s game plan is to drop the boys at the park in the morning and take off to do some messages, or she might go next door to the tennis court and have a knockabout with daughter Emily, or go swimming.

Pétanque is easy to get the gist of and to play at a basic level, and it can be played with just two people or with two teams of up to three. The Bushy Park pétanque players are happy to show interested passersby how to play. In brief, a marker called a jack is thrown, then one of the players walks or measures six to 10m from the jack and makes a circle, and then the players must throw the boules towards the jack while standing in the circle. The object is to end up with your boule closer to the jack than your opponent can manage; Pierre describes this as “capturing the castle”, using the boules as an army. Throws include “pointing” (aiming to land near the jack) or “shooting” (trying to knock your opponent’s boule out of its position near the jack).

Pierre shows me one of his son Jack’s boules. “Jack,” it says, the engraving ensuring there’ll be no mix-up on the piste. The steel balls have a medieval look about them, although boules would originally have been played with wooden balls. Although Jack is just 14, he is competing in pétanque internationally. It’s not the most physical game in the world, the senior Di Pizzo admits, but “there is no other game where grandparents and grandchildren can play together. Well, maybe golf, but this is more accessible than golf.” In fact, Jack plays alongside a French man named Richard Elvin, who already has 23 world championships behind him. There are only 22 players in Ireland licenced to compete internationally. In France there are 375,000 licenced players, and about 17 million people play casually.

Breffney explains that, in Bushy Park at least, pétanque is particularly popular with French chefs. When I joined the Di Pizzos there, I was introduced to an assortment of players: John O’Grady, who belongs to Bray Pétanque Club; his wife Liz; Elvin from France; and Ramon from Mauritius. Ramon has been in Ireland six months, and started playing in Bushy Park just three months ago. He says he was surprised to happen on it in Ireland, but “in Mauritius there is a game in every little space and courtyard. For me it’s a great way to meet friends without going to the pub.”

It is also low-cost – the only outlay is for a set of boules – and a great excuse for fresh air. The park’s pétanque players are out all year round, and O’Grady says “you’d be surprised how little the weather actually interferes, and we have the trees for shelter.”

The Cost of Playing the Game

Bushy Park piste is a public ground and free for all to use. However if people wish to join a fully insured club, the annual membership for Park Pétanque Club is €24. Members of the Park Pétanque Club can be found training and playing games every Saturday from 2pm (a good time for beginners to go along) and every Tuesday from 6pm (in late spring, summer and early autumn, weather permitting). Contact Pierre Di Pizzo on 087-2078410 for further information. The qualifier for the 2010 Celtic Challenge takes place in Bushy Park on September 12th.

The Irish Pétanque Association is the national organisation for the game in Ireland (visit www.irishpetanque.org for details of clubs in Cork, Tipperary, Galway, Sligo, Down, Dublin and Wicklow) or how to build a piste and set up your own club. More information on the European Federation website (www.cep-petanque.com) and the International Federation of Pétanque and Provençal Games (www.fipjp.com).

Marks and Spencer sell a beginner’s set of boules (including a jack and measuring cord) in their Summer at Home catalogue (ref T213935) for £19.50 (about €23). You can order a set at www.marksandspencer.com, in-store or by phone. You can also order a set of boules on www.nimblefingers.ie for €19.99. Competition-level boules are more expensive, but start at about €50 for beginner competitors and junior boules, www.laboulenoire.com