We are going to look carefully at the skill of pointing in Petanque

Advanced Pointing

Pointing over or around

Equipment Required Your set of boule Three Jacks 25 metres of string or twine 10 metre tape

Previously we focused on basic tips to improve pointing, setting up heads and practicing shots. Here we are looking at pointing and adapting to different situations. In the Shooting Advanced you will spend a long time setting up the parallel lines for shooting but do not worry the hard work is used in this tip.

The string lines from the circle are used to practice pointing. The set up includes measuring out three distances. Six metres, Eight metres and Ten metres. At these distances from the circle place a jack and scratch or draw a Twelve inch circle around each Jack. From the circle you can now see two lines of string three inches apart. then three jacks set at different distances with a circle drawn around each one. The exercise is to point to each jack and stay in the marked circle. Touching the circle with your boule will count as a score. Easy!!! Yes, but hardened veterans of this coaching course will know there is more to this than meets the eye. Some clever readers will have spotted it already. Once your first boule has been played and rests in the target circle near the jack you can score your well deserved five points. Now point to the next longest jack. But my boule is in the way at the six metre jack. How do I get round it? Well that's the idea of this exercise. You can spin it around the six metre boule and jack or you can lob over the top. This depends on your piste and how close you have been reading these tips. On a deep piste lobbing over the top should require little effort, although on harder pistes more height maybe required to stop the boule from rolling on. Good news is, on a harder piste you can spin the boule in from either side to reach the eight metre jack. Once you have thrown the boule to the eight metre jack try for the ten metre on. This maybe very difficult as you now have two boule and two jacks in the way. Also ten metres is a long way and requires concentration and a good grip on your boule. Try and you maybe surprised how well you do. I do not worry how you get the boule to the target circles, you can go around or over, it is up to you. If you wish you can move the jacks to different lengths but the closer they are the tighter your pointing will need to be. i.e. six metres, six and half and seven metres will be difficult but push yourself and boule can be more interesting.

Once all three boule have been thrown add your score. Five points for each well places boule. Hitting any of the previously thrown boule reduces your score by five points.

Good Luck

How to score

Boule stopping in circle 5 points

Hitting front boule minus 5 points

Maximum score per three boule 15 points

Amount of Boule thrown for exercise 30