From August 2022 it is our intention to post a brief monthly up-date on recent and future events and organisational matters, for the interest of our members.
CEP Championships
The success of our two male and female teams at the recent CEP Championships held in the Netherlands during July is something we can celebrate within our sport. Much has already been written and favourably commented upon, not only from within our own membership, but by other European Petanque Federations.
The key importance now, is how do we make the best use of that success to promote our sport and continue with the progress made.
Unlike the Lionesses with their deserved European triumph, we do not have their advantage of having national media coverage to aid us, but our recent success still offers us an opportunity to act as a springboard in attracting new members regardless of age or gender, in playing petanque at club or regional level.
Membership
Our PE membership is slowly recovering from the ravages of the Covid virus. To date we have 2206 adults and 82 Junior members, with 148 registered PE Clubs with their various regional leagues.
An area of importance has been the LoveAdmin membership system we have used to date. This has resulted in considered change from the current restricted function to a more effective and efficient operational module. The introduction of a new Sport:80 management system is now being tested with the aim of having all regions, being fully operational for the 2023 renewal period.
As it all unfolds the regions and clubs will start to see the benefit as they become engaged with the change-over to the new system.
Home Nations Tournament
Our Scottish Petanque Association colleagues will host the tournament this year at Troon, on the west coast of Scotland. The Petanque England representative teams will again be challenging those from Wales, Jersey, and Scotland, who themselves enjoyed a podium finish in the recent CEP European tournament.
Petanque England will be hosting the 2023 Home Nations, it is therefore proposed to make the announcement as to the selected venue and the provisional dates, at this year’s tournament.
Inter-Regional 2022
This will be the first time that our annual National Championship and Challenge tournament is being held at the new venue of the Pakefield Holiday Centre, near Lowestoft in Suffolk.
There will be 14 Championship and 16 Challenge regional squads, and 6 Junior regional teams participating in the competitions, equating to 750+ Petanque England adult and junior members being involved.
It had previously been hoped to instigate an additional competition, which could be participated by those PE regional members who did not qualify for their respective regional teams. Unfortunately, it has now become clear that the area identified for the additional terrains will not be available for our use this year.
National Youth and Espoirs
Whilst the year has seen changes to the National Youth’s previous organization and moving to a more assessable multi regional function, the opportunity for the selected National Youth Girls team to participate as in the CEP Female Junior Triples Championship, being held in Majorca Spain during October, is welcome.
They will be joined at this tournament by the National Espoir Men’s team for the CEP Male Espoirs Triples Championship, but sadly, due to several reasons, they will not be accompanied by a National Youth Boys, or Female Espoirs team this year.