Petanque Tactics What shot to play and when?

Petanque Tactics What shot to play and when

Triples. Putting on the pressure and winning the end

Six boule per team and deep in game, things can get a little out of kilter. The object is the same generally, Win the end and keep the jack and keep control of the game. Sometimes you may need to play damage limitation and this can be tough. The acceptance that you will lose the end can be hard to accept but losing a point on an end is always going to be preferable than losing 4 of 5 but that is another story for another day. Here we are looking at winning the end and how to put pressure on the opposition.  The head is pretty full with no team looking like a big score and you have one boule to play as do the opposition. They are holding one and you are 2^nd and 3^rd. These boule are approx 16 inches from the jack at the side. Their holding boule is 12 inches away on the other side of the head.

Your last player is sent to point with a rest on the opposition’s boule, maybe pushing it away enough to then hold 3 points. They get comfortable in the circle and then decide to shoot. They hit the boule and you are now holding 2 points. The opposition are unfazed and step into the circle and point their boule on the jack. 1 point to them.    The end had been a tough one but what had gone unnoticed was the opposition player who was going to play the last boule was the pointer! They had been playing very steady during the game and the shooter and middle had been defending the first boule they had thrown on this end. By your team shooting it allowed the opposition player to do exactly what they had been doing all game. We can all learn from other sports and Rugby players always talk of a miss match in defence and attack. By pointing your team’s last boule it would make the opposition player either point a difficult boule or shoot, either way you could grasp the point on the end and keep control of the jack.

If the last player from the opposition was the shooter then maybe the shot would be the right thing to do. Have you seen the shooter point or the pointer shoot? Keep note it may win the game for you and enable you to play a tactic that could put pressure on the player and make them play out of their comfort zone.

This tip obviously depends on lots of factors including piste type, how easy is it to point to the jack, what boule are in the way or waiting for the jack to be flicked back but it is for discussion to make you look at how you close an end down to sneak the point and more importantly of all keep control of the Jack. This will dictate the length of the next end and the placement of it, be it in an area of deeper surface grit or over a natural obstacle such as a dip in the piste etc.

Keep talking, discussing and thinking to improve your team game. Remember. You are looking from the circle at this photo.