Pétanque players celebrate Bastille Day with a tournament

Pétanque players at the Morningside Country Club hope to encourage more people to join in on the beloved French game.

To celebrate Bastille Day on 14 July, members gathered at the club to take part in a round-robin tournament. They played in three rounds of matches after which the final two teams with the highest average faced off against one another to win a prize.

Pétanque is similar to boules and players throw their set of balls toward a smaller target ball, known as a cachonnet. The objective is to have your balls closer to the target than the opposing team.

Dylan Meeks, a representative of the sport for the club, said that while it’s not a mainstream sport in South Africa, they hope to encourage more people to try it out.

Meeks was intrigued by the game when he came across some people playing the game in Cape Town but only tried his hand at it when visiting the club. Other have been playing it their whole lives. One of the players Hamish Cochrne, began playing the game in 1994 and has been hooked ever since.

The sport is not incredibly physically taxing but requires strategy, making it popular among older people. However, Meeks said they would certainly like to encourage younger people to participate. It’s also a very social sport, with players often rotating their teammates.

“It’s very low impact, so anybody can play it and anybody can pick it up. It’s a very easy game to pick up but it takes a lifetime to master because there are a lot of idiosyncrasies.”

Meeks added that getting the right equipment is relatively cheap compared to other sports, and setting up a playing field, which is typically a hard, sandy surface, is not expensive either. Once a player has bought their set of balls, they last many years.

There are currently only three formal clubs in the country but the sport is growing in popularity across Europe, and Meeks hopes that this will eventually be the case in South Africa.

Details: Morningside Country Club 011 803 1805.

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