Chance for people to try petanque

PETANQUE FANS: Kahutia Bowling Club members and friends (from left) Gary Tocker, Diane Brown, Judy Taylor, Carol Jukes, Ray Taylor, Trevor Jukes and Lyne Fitzgerald on the petanque terrain in the club grounds in Cobden Street next to Chelsea Hospital. Anyone interested in trying petanque can attend an open day at the club’s terrain tomorrow. File picture by Liam Clayton

PETANQUE

A PETANQUE Open Day is being held at Kahutia Bowling Club’s five-lane petanque “terrain” tomorrow.

Admission to the open day, at the club’s base in Cobden Street, will be free of charge.

Open-day activities will run from 10am to 4pm. Anyone interested in the game of petanque can turn up at any time within that period and try it.

The day has no fixed format. Club members aim to keep it informal and ensure people have a good time.

For those who do not own a set of boules, the club will have some sets available for use.

Boules are the metal balls, usually hollow, thrown as close as possible to a smaller wooden ball.

Petanque was suggested to the Kahutia Bowling Club’s management committee in 2017 as a game that would expand membership without compromising lawn bowling activities. It was suggested the two codes would be complementary. Experience elsewhere was that most members played predominantly one game or the other but mingled socially after the day’s play.

Initially, the club intended to create a recreational facility, but members opted for a competition-grade amenity that would allow the development of players who wanted to take part at the highest levels of the sport.

The game is played on an area called a terrain, on which lanes called pistes are roped off.

Traditionally, the playing surface is hard dirt or gravel. At Kahutia, fine limestone aggregate was locally sourced for the surface. The aim is to have a loose surface that allows a good roll but not so much that the boules roll too far or too fast.

The origins of petanque go back to the ancient Greeks, who played a game of tossing coins, then flat stones and later stone balls. The Romans modified the game by adding a target, and this variation was taken to France by Roman soldiers and sailors.

After the Romans, the stone balls were replaced by wooden balls and in the Middle Ages the game became commonly known as boules.

In the 14th century, Charles IV and Charles V of France forbade commoners from playing the sport, a ban that was not lifted till the 17th century.

By the 19th century, the game had become lawn bowls in England, but in France the game evolved into jeu provençal, similar to today’s petanque, except the length of the playing area was longer and players ran three steps before throwing.

The current form of petanque originated in 1907 in La Ciotat, in Provence, France. It was developed by cafe owner Ernest Pitiot to accommodate a player, Jules Lenoir, whose rheumatism prevented him from running before he threw the ball. The length of the pitch was reduced by about half, and a player no longer took a run-up to throw the ball but stood, stationary, in a circle.

The first petanque tournament under the new rules was organised by brothers Ernest and Joseph Pitiot in 1910, and the new form of the game soon became the most popular form of boules in France.