Leicester Pétanque Club with its challenging pitches is hosting tomorrow’s (Sunday May 18th) Home Nations Qualifier (HNQ) with a trip to Wales up for grabs in August.
After experiencing low entries (particularly from female players) in the SSE series for Triples and more recently Doubles, there’s a strong 48-team turnout, which is at the top end of the 40+ entries that Pétanque England used to attract pre-COVID.
Nottingham hosted this for many years and last year Rainworth was the venue and with that level of entry, it’s going to be a tight fit on the available pitches in Western Park.
The Leicester club itself is a relatively recent addition to England’s national venues and is a great example of a dedicated facility in a highly visible location, being a conversion of a former lawn bowls venue that was surplus to requirements. Hard work from club officials John Edmondson, Michelle Roe and Allan Edwards made the site spring into pétanque life!
It’s just the kind of venue that’s needed to promote and grow the sport as hopefully it transitions to larger facilities either standalone or linked to larger sports clubs, examples being Whitnash, Royal Wooton Bassett, Rainworth and Gravesend amongst others.
English reaction
It’s possible that the high level of entries has been motivated by a reaction from English players to the setback suffered in Jersey where for the first time ever in the history of the tournament which was first held at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff in 2000, England did not emerge victorious.
Jersey 2024 was a wakeup call and there’s clearly a determination to win that trophy back!
The other attraction is obviously that Home Nations is unique in that it is the only national representation where there are eight spots available. It’s also usually a highly sociable and enjoyable weekend.
The HNQ has always been traditionally decided by a one-day tournament and with the higher numbers that tend to enter, PE has traditionally employed the Swiss System, which is used in the qualifying rounds of the sport’s European and World Championships.
It’s a random draw for the first round, so some pretty juicy contests can be pulled out of the hat, meaning that favourites to qualify can suffer an early setback. No teams can play each other twice and the further rounds pair teams on a random basis with the same wins, except in a ‘crossover’ basis.
Now for some maths!
P365 ‘Swiss geeks’ have worked out that for a five-round Swiss involving 48 teams, the following applies:
- There are no crossover games until the fifth round – you will be playing another team each round on equal wins;
- If you’re into maths, the way to determine the optimal number of rounds for a Swiss system tournament you use the binary logarithm formula log2(x), where x = the number of teams. That formula for 48 gives the result 5.585, which rounded up suggests 6 rounds;
- With five rounds and 48 teams, there will be 9 teams on 4 wins out of 5. One of these teams, even though they have won 80% of their games, will not qualify in the Top 8;
- In the 5th round, there will be a crossover game as there will be three teams on 4 wins and 12 on three wins. One team on three wins will play a team on 4 wins, while another team on three wins will play a team on two wins.
Good luck to all teams looking to get that trip to Pontyclun, just west of Cardiff on the weekend of the 9th and 10th August – Jersey, Scotland and Wales, we look forward to renewing great friendships!
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