Rooting Tooting Scooting Petanque Shooting

Rooting Tooting Scooting Shooting

No, we have not started playing in the Wild West of Old but there is an Elephant in the room when it comes to shooting in petanque.

The task of the shooter is to remove an opposition’s boule from its position. Now that seems a fairly straight forward event. Opposition’s stationary boule being hit by your shooters boule. Great shot, congratulations all round and maybe even a hand slap if you get a carreau. Well it’s not as simple as that. Petanque is an art form to many. May I hasten to add that includes me! The opposition’s boule is the target. The shooters arm comes back and their boule sails through the air to land plum on the target and a superb crack of boule against boule results in a brilliant shot. Job done.  Great shot!

WAIT!  The piste is fine dust on a rock hard flat surface. The shooters arm comes back and the boule fly’s from their hand. It reaches the height of about 4 feet and lands 2 metres from the shooter. It skims the ground like a (well, we can all add a descriptive animal here; weasel is one of my favourites next to ferret or rat. Feel free to use your own favourite.) weasel and smacks into the target boule. Job done. Great shot. Now this is where it gets a bit tricky. You see, this shot is frowned upon. It is gut wrenchingly awful, against the very nature of the game. It is just not cricket.