Thrilling Final after Last-Minute Change of Venue

Pontyclun PC, based at Pontyclun RFC, once again played host to a National Championships – this time for the Men’s Doubles.

Originally due to be held at another venue, a last-minute issue meant that an 11th-hour change was needed and the WPA are very grateful to the Executive of Pontyclun PC, and Marie Jones in particular, for making the arrangements that allow this event to go ahead.

Shortly after the notification of venue change was sent to all the entrants, the PA weer advised that the local council, Rhondda Cynon Taf, had introduced a more rigid covid requirement to ensure face-covering were to be worn in any public indoor space. This necessitate another communication to ensure everyone was aware of these restrictions..

A total of 10 teams entered – not the best number for a competition – so the playing format followed one used previously, with teams divided into 2 pools of 5, with play following a round-robin pithing the group and teams in each pool that had a bye, playing the “bye-team” from the other pool, all played using timed games. .

Following the completion of the pool games, the top-2 sides from each pool were drawn into semi-finals to play full-length (i.e. untimed) games, so Winner-Pool-A v Runner-Up-Pool-B and Winner-Pool-B v Runner-Up-Pool-A.

The Semi- Finals started at 4pm, with Richard Harris & Kon Tomczyk playing Gareth & Stewart Spencer and Ian Bailey & Jean-Yves Robic playing father-&-son pairing, Huw & Matthew Morris.

Bailey & Robic dominated their semi, winning 13-3, whilst Harris & Tomczyk had to work hard for their victory, finally closing it out 13-11.

After a brief pause, the final got underway at 5pm, with Harris & Tomczyk making the best of starts by taking 5 points on the first end. Bailey & Robic clawed a couple back before Harris & Tomczyk pulled ahead again. But they were unable to close the game out, allowing Bailey & Robic to drag their way back to level the scores at 10-10, before easing ahead to 11-10 and finally coming out as victors 13-10 and claiming the title.

Once again, the pistes played their part, but there was still some fine and accurate play in the final.

Huge congratulations to our 2020 National Doubles for Men champions, and, once again, our thanks to Pontyclun PC and Pontyclun RFC for hosting the event in a safe and sporting way.

Standings after Pool Stages:

Pool A			Pool B
1	Richard Harris & Kon Tomczyk		1	Ian Bailey & Jean-Yves Robic
2	Hugh Morris & Matthew Morris		2	Gareth Spencer & Stewart Spencer
3	Bernard Adshead & Roger Griffin		3	Jake Caston & Bob Pugh
4	John Attfield & Derek Jones		4	Roger Green & Sean Smith
5	Colin Sweet & Basil White		5	Jeremy Clare & Len Field

Next-up is the National Precision Shooting for Women & Men, currently scheduled for September 27th – venue still to be confirmed.

 

 

Bob Pugh
WPA National President

SUPERB WIN FOR THE FIRST-TIMERS

The first National competition was finally held on Sunday 6th September at Pontyclun PC’s base at Pontyclun RFC.

It seemed like a very long time since the last WPA competition was held, way back in March, when the President’s Cup was held at the Wheatsheaf Inn.

After all the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and after the relaxation of the lockdown restrictions imposed by the Welsh Government, the WPA finally kicked its season into play, when 6 teams entered the National Doubles for Women.

A trial doubles competition had been held at Pontyclun and the lessons learned were used as the basis of the play for this competition.

For the vast majority of the players, this was their first competitive outing of the year, and a number of the teams were new to each other having not played together previously, as well as a few more familiar pairings. The competition was played under the WPA’s published guidelines, including the regulation 2m social-distancing requirements. These included enhanced hygiene, recording of everybody’s temperature, recording of personal contact details for compliance with the Welsh Government’s Track, Trace, Protect programme, 30-person-limit within the “activity bubble” and full 2m social distancing.

With 6 teams entered, the “round-robin” format was adopted so every team played the other 5.

September being what it is, we experienced hot sun, chilly winds, light rain – often all within a few minutes!

The pistes at Pontyclun are renowned for their unforgiving nature, but this didn’t deter any of the teams and the quality of play overall was of a very high standard. This was evident by the start of Round 5 where, despite one team having built an unassailable lead, 4 of the remaining teams were in with a chance of the runners-up spot.

This finally went to the “locals’, Kath Attfield (justifying her award of Most Improved Player of 2019) and Marie Jones, who won 3 of their games – 2 of which were extremely tense finishes of 13-12 & 13-11.

The honours of the day, with a clean-sweep of 5 wins out of 5 matches went to the Monkstone PC-based pairing of Gill Clarke and Gill Greenwell.

“The Gills'” victory is even more remarkable because, not only was it their first competitive pairing, it was Gill Greenwell’s first National competition, it was her first visit to Pontyclun and she only started playing pétanque in June of 2019.

FInal Standings:

Position
1	Gill Clarke & Gill Greenwell
2	Kath Attfield & Marie Jones
3	Chris McCaddon & Karen Robbins
4	Gemma Foster & Tansy Mayfield
5	Trudie Merry & Michelle Spencer
6	Vickie Adshead & Jayne Dunn

Huge congratulations to our 2020 National Doubles for Women champions, and our thanks to Pontyclun PC and Pontyclun RFC for hosting the event in a safe and sporting way.

 

 

 

Bob Pugh
WPA National President