Winning petanque tips Teamplay discussed

Teamplay 1

Before we get into tactics we will look at Teamplay starting with top tips from top players.

In this series we look at how top players have reached the top of play in the UK. Names will be kept to save embarrassment for as you all know it is easier to say than to do.

Here we look at some tips we have not covered in our practice and tactics series and well worth a mention. The key to Petanque is Belief. Belief in yourself and belief in your teammates. Working together to get that important win means you need to be a close unit all knowing what you and your team are capable of as well as the limitations of your team. There is little point going all out to hit six boule an end when one of you team has never hit a boule in their life! So the basics are teamwork and how you can inspire and encourage you team for example,

1.As we have said, team play is about understanding how your team play and how they throw a boule. I used to say, a team I played in had great strength because we threw all our boule in three different ways. Therefore on a difficult piste one of us would generally get close, however if playing a good team of shooters this will soon be the undoing as they only have to hit a few boule to put you under pressure. It is by far better to get the pointer and middle to point in a similar way as detailed in point 2

2. A useful tip idea is to learn to throw the boule very similar to each other’s style to your team mates so that you can mirror image each other when it goes right? This is one of the major problems any team can have. When the pointer throws his high lob, the middle and shooter who play a lower shot find it impossible to learn anything from this throw but when the pointer throws the "teams low shot the rest of the team can always copy each other when a shot is played right. More importantly the landing spot can be focused on and changed if the piste is faster or slower than at first perceived. This relies on practicing different shots so you can mirror a successful shot.