Brighton and Hove Petanque Club

Regular monthly column providing different tips, rules and pétanque etiquette to gradually build up your knowledge & expertise of the game.

Last month – we looked at “Set Pieces – when the opponents have a boule resting on one of yours”. This month we examine “a well defended end” 

Set Pieces are the various situations that frequently occur in many game situations. The most common Set Pieces are:
• the 1st boule and your response to it
• when the opponents have a boule resting on one of yours
• a well defended end, where you’ve played a good first boule and the opponents have surrounded it with their boules

These are the sorts of things that regular teams need to practise and agree, to a) save time but b) more importantly, ensure better team play with hopefully everybody in agreement.
A well-defended end is where you have the point, the opponents have played several close boules without beating you but the close boules make it difficult to score more points. A typical scenario is when your first boule is about 30cm from the jack. The opponents aren’t quite sure whether to point or shoot (what would you do?) but they decide to point and surround your boule with their boules.
You’re holding the point and you’ve got 5 more boules to play – what to do? By now, you should know that there’s often no clear “right” or “wrong” answer other than “it depends”. So, the exercise this time is for your team to decide how they would play

The things you should be taking into account:
• how many points do you need ?
• what is a realist number of points ?
• what are your team’s pointing and shooting strengths ?
• how easy is the terrain to point ?
• should you just take 1 with 5 boules in hand ?

Remember, if you point, you could easily knock one of their boules on. If you shoota) you also risk taking your own boule out and b) if you’re going to clear their boules, you probably need to shoot several times Another option to always consider is moving the jack.

You may do this by pointing or shooting. This isn’t easy but if you succeed, you can probably get a good score.

If the opponent’s don’t have a “back marker” (a boule placed well beyond the jack) they could have left themselves vulnerable to the jack being promoted. So if you are defending it doesn’t always pay to place all your boules in front of the jack and sometimes a longer boule may raise concern for your opponents and restrict the number of points you concede or even win the point if they promote the jack onto your “back marker”.
This is exactly the sort of exercise you should setup on the terrain and then practice different tactics to see what works best.