Author: Parki

For the third year in succession, Free the Bears gathered at Prospect Petanque for a fundraiser and a night of fun. Two games were played, with supper between them and much laughter and cheer rang through the pistes. There were even prizes for the first and second most successful teams.

The Free the Bears Fund (FBF) is an Australian charitable wildlife-protection organisation. It was started by Mary Hutton, after she watched a documentary in 1993 on bears kept in small cages for bile farming. Free the Bears provides lifelong care to over 240 rescued sun bears and moon bears in their sanctuaries in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. 

Fundraising during the evening ranged from a raffle, pick the lucky number and the sale of donated prizes.

Stan and Glenis focussed on accurate placement of boules today, setting four different tasks for participants to complete, all of them quite taxing as the shots were quite long. We moved between the tasks, with Stan and Glen and Gavin offering hints along the way. “Get it high”, “Keep your arm straight”, “That was across your body” and “Good shot” were frequent calls. Games continued on the other pistes while coaching was done.

The next formalised coaching session will be after our Saturday Competition on 20 November and Gavin, Stan and Glenis are available at other times when they are at the Club.

Just about a full house at the Club today for a Melbourne Cup Lunch. Many thanks to Janet, Michael and Marty for looking after the lunch orders and to Carol for doing the sweeps and our unique “Prospect Cup”. The “Prospect Cup” was a little different this year with the six horses being auctioned before the race and the owner/trainer of the winning horse took the auction funds – a whopping $104.

A good time had by all!!

Gavin concentrated on assisting players to get height into their throws during today’s coaching session, while giving feedback as members sent their boules over their choice of height in an attempt to get into the circle. Both experienced and relatively new players benefitted from this exercise. Many thanks, Gavin. Gavin will continue to offer assistance to players when he is at the Club and it is requested by members.

Glenis and Stan are pleased to offer coaching courses on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month, from 3.00 pm to 4.00 pm on the 1st Saturday and after the Saturday Competition until 5.00 pm on the 3rd Saturday of the month. These fixed coaching events do not preclude casual coaching as and when necessary.

Join in the fun and see how your game can be improved. The pistes are still available for games for those not participating in the coaching.

Van and Gavin were the overall victors in Club de Petanque D’Adelaide’s Sabella Cup on Sunday 10 October. Congratulations to them and to all other winners in the various divisions and thanks to the Club de Petanque D’Adelaide for hosting the event.

Laurie Anderson, a long time member who recently celebrated his 90th birthday at the Club, brought along an article from the National COTA News, December 2000 of which he is the author. In that article Laurie wrote:

Petanque, generally regarded as being as French as the Eiffel Tower, may in fact have evolved from an Egyptian ball game. Archaeologists involved in a recent dig in Egypt discovered evidence in the sarcophagus of a prince who lived several centuries before Christ, of a game that resembled Petanque.

It is generally accepted that the modern version of the game originated in the South of France, in a village called Ciotat near Marseilles in the early 1900s.

Ernest Pitiot is credited with having adapted the throwing action of an earlier form of the game to suit a disabled friend who was finding it difficult to play.

What do you think???

Shooting was continued in today’s Coaching when Stan and Glenis set up challenges for us hoping to improve our form. The first challenge was to see how many shots it took to get seven boules out of the triangle, over long and short distances. We then moved to shooting one boule from a circle, without interfering with a second boule and lastly we aimed to shoot the cochinet out of the circle. A great session, Stan and Glenis, and we thank you.

We had five tables of competitors for our 2021 Quiz Night, calling themselves Horse with No Name, Brainiacs, Secret 7, Google Less, and Universally Challenged. Teams worked their way through five rounds of ten questions covering Proverbs/Sayings (all teams scored 10/10!!!), Geography, Arts, Sports and finishing with a Mixed Bag. Also thrown in by Quizmaster, Jan, was a set of Wordwheels and Scrambled Words where teams could win bonus points for being the fastest and most accurate to submit completed answer sheets. Supper time was not a time to slacken off as teams had 25 business logos to identify.

The Secret 7 team on table 3 were the overall winners, scoring 59.5 points and Brainiacs (Table 2) and Google Less (Table 4) tied for second place. There were only 3 points difference in the scores of the winners and the fifth team, so well done to all.

Special thanks to our President, Allan, and Vice President, Brett, for their help on the bar and with dishes and at one stage they had to step in to adjudicate some results. Thanks also to those who helped to distribute supper.

Thank you also to our attendees for being so willing to participate and add to the evening.