That’s me and my partner Wayne at last weekend’s national doubles pétanque tournament.

I was content with my performance in the singles, as I’ve already mentioned. For the doubles, we started off very strong: after the first three games, we were seeded 8th out of 50. But that was it… we crashed and burned. We only won one more game out of the remaining six and finished near the bottom.

I was pretty bummed afterwards… it’s really frustrating to watch yourself fail like that. You know what to do, and you know you can do it, but then you mess up.

Luckily for the partnership, we were both in the same boat… he messed up more or less the same amount as me. So at least neither of us had to contend with too much guilt for letting the other guy down.

Another thing you have to learn in sport is resilience. So after a long hot shower and a night’s sleep, I managed to find a new frame of mind for Monday’s national team tryouts. I knew, and particularly after the crappy weekend, that I wouldn’t be on the team. So that took the pressure off. The tryouts therefore were more of a clinic for me… playing with and against the best players, chatting about tactics and techniques, etc. I actually played quite well, and so the trip was saved.

There’s always next year…

Today I played in the NZ National Singles pétanque tournament in Paraparaumu, about an hour out of Wellington.

Seven games, and I’m knackered! I ended up in the top half of the field, tied for 19th out of 54. And I beat a couple of really good players.

Tomorrow and Sunday is the Doubles tournament, and then Monday is tryouts for the annual AU-NZ grudge match.

Fun, but I’ll be very very tired by the time it’s all over.

Tl;dr version : We won!!

My second year as a member of the Chanticleer Cup team came to a successful conclusion last weekend as the Auckland squad trounced our evil Wellington rivals over two days of fierce pétanque to bring the trophy home.

I felt quite pleased to make the team this year, and I got a lot of good coaching out of it, particularly from a couple of the more experienced players.

Maybe more importantly, I got to know some of my teammates … who will be rivals at the next tournament we all enter… better through all the time we spent training and traveling down to Palmerston North. Having a closer connection to these pétanque friends makes the whole thing more fun.

One could write a much longer story about all the experiences we had, but, well, not that interesting unless you were there. For instance, it was cold down there on the prairie, so some of us warmed the boules in hot water for an hour or so before going out to play. There was some debate over whether that was clever or a sign of softness. Whatever… it felt nice and we won. There must be a dozen more tidbits like that. And of course recounting the action could take as long as doing it in real life… the drama, the close calls! Ken Burns himself couldn’t hope to capture it all in one of his puny 40-hour films.

But regardless of how much I spare you the details, trust me that it was altogether a fun weekend and something I’d probably do again next year… unless I’ve shifted my focus to an even bigger tournament…