The challenging pitches of Worthing Pétanque Club hosted the process established by Pétanque England (PE) to find the English Men’s Triples representation at the 2025 European Championships in Santa Susanna Spain over the weekend of 5th and 6th April.
After a two day round robin under sunny skies, where the eight competing teams had faced each other twice, it was the Kent quadruple of Dean Ashby, Scott Ashby, Rowland Jones and Jason White that emerged victorious and unbeaten.
For the Ashby brothers and Jason it will be a second European Championships in a row following their Top 16 placing in Albertville in 2023 where they were edged out by a powerful Swedish team in the knockout stages. Their coach at that tournament , Rowly, will be joining them on the pitch this time.
Saturday
Day one at Worthing proved to be a straight fight between Team Ashby and the Chiltern/Kent combo of Sam Blakey, Ben Gallimore, Jeremy Huntley and Kai Shefield. Both teams arrived at the seventh timed game of the day unbeaten for a showdown and it seemed that Team Ashby had the match by its throat at 10-4 after six ends.
However, a spirited fightback by Team Huntley sparked by some strong shooting by Jeremy and Kai levelled the match at 10 apiece after the eighth end. After the tenth end, Team Ashby led 12-10 but at the conclusion of the eleventh end after Rowly took his own boule out with the last shot in an attempt to hit the opposition out for the win, it was all square on 12.
The next two ends both ended up being dead, after Jason made a superb do or die shot on the jack with Team Huntley having four boules in hand and then Jeremy took both boule and jack. Unfortunately it was all over for Jeremy & Co. at end 14 when a terrific lead point by Dean drew two missed shots from Jeremy and then two close misses on the jack by Kai.
3rd placed on the day with four wins was the team comprising the previous England internationals of Jack Blows, Callum Lombard, David Plumhoff and Sean Prendergast who lost to both Team Ashby and Team Huntley and to the Anglia Region team of Jeff Hoey, James Shreeve and and Dan Shevlin. Dan Hill, Jamie Lewis and Vince Wills were placed fourth having lost to the teams that finished above them.
Sunday
With Team Ashby’s clean sweep on day one, all the teams who lost more than one game knew they faced an uphill battle to turn things around in the round robin on the second day.
Team Huntley had two very narrow wins to 12, where they were in adverse positions against the teams of Ben Campbell, John Geddes and Andrew Roe and the team of Nouri Beladaci, Oussema Hamdaoui and Kamal Mouladi respectively but took six out of six to face the similarly unbeaten Team Ashby once again in a final game. This time it was competitive but not so much on a knife edge as Team Ashby became the SSE invincibles winning 13-8.
After the match it became clear that there had only been one win and an 11 points difference between the teams as they entered that final match on the second day.
Team Wills ended up in third position on 9 wins after losing only to the winners and runners up, while Team Plumhoff finishing fourth overall and winning only half of their matches had another disappointing day only taking three points in total off the three top ranked teams and also succumbing to Simon Doble, Tony Morgan and Stephen Welford who otherwise had a tough weekend only chalking up three wins in total.
Despite the limitations of a two-day process at a single venue, there can be little doubt that the round robin process was robust with every team playing each other twice and giving little room for second chances. Playing another format such as randomly drawn leagues or barrage with an entry of this size could have introduced an element of chance.
What have we learnt in 2025?
The wider question for top level pétanque in England is around the small level of entries. The process was based on a ‘winners take all’ approach with selection only being a factor if teams entered as a three (half the teams did). There is no argument that winning that cherished England shirt is fully in the hands of the players both in terms of deciding the composition of their team and with representation being decided nowhere else but on the pitch.
So why are players not entering? Probably more importantly, are there players/teams out there whose absence means that the country could be more competitive internationally? Might there be a different process which brings in other rewards for teams that finish second to fourth or even includes the Home Nations qualification? If you register with P365 you can post your comments below.
Given the fine performance of the runners up, you would have thought that they merited at least some financial support from PE to play in a suitable international tournament in Europe.
Ultimately, the most important issue is whether the team that is representing England is of international standard and likely to be competitive. There is no doubt that the team that has won the honour of playing in Spain at the European Championships between 17th to 20th July has the right credentials. Three of the team played very well in Albertville in 2023 and the fourth is a highly experienced player and coach that has serial representations under his belt.
Regardless of the entry, the outcome is a good one. There is no doubt that the best team won in Worthing and everyone that supports English pétanque should be confident that we have a top international level team going with a track record of preparing the right way for the tournament. All the very best to Dean, Jason, Rowly and Scott and P365 is planning to bring live and exclusive coverage of their European campaign.
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