Petanque tips are back. Shoot Twice?

Shoot Twice in an end one after the other

Welcome to this session on Petanque’s shooting coaching tip. We were asked the other day why players shoot twice or only shoot once. This is a tricky subject as there are many reasons why the choice is made. It depends on a host of variations and we shall look at some here to try and make it clearer.

We have all seen players shoot, then when they miss the target, shoot again straight away. It is always interesting in this situation not to look at the player in the circle but the reaction of their team mates. If they look a bit horrified it means almost certainly the plan was to shoot and then assess the situation dependant on the outcome of the shot.  It is true that this is the best way to decide what to do in most situations. They may have been horrified because the shooter shot twice out of frustration because they could not believe they missed but knew what they had done wrong in order to miss and so corrected and shot again.  This rush of blood to the head can happen to even the most experienced players. They may escape a glare from their teammates if the second shot hits the target but playing boule without a team plan is generally a slide towards losing the game.

If the opposition players remain firm in their position then the plan was to shoot and if that shot did not have a successful outcome, simply reset and shoot again. The most common reason for this tactic would be if the team they were playing against were out of boule and the shooting team had two boule left and they were looking to take out a key boule. Look at photo 1 Red team left with two boule to shoot out the one key yellow boule. Not so obvious using real boule! It may of course be game on the ground with both teams having boule left. As with all our tips, your view of the head is from the direction of the circle.