Pétanque England’s process (known as ‘SSE’) to find its representative team for the CEP’s Men’s European Triples Championship 2025 took place over the weekend of 5th & 6th April 2025 at the Worthing Pétanque Club.
Eight teams battled it out over the tournament playing each other twice in a round robin format over the days. The winners of the tournament are invited to play for England, unless they compete as a team of three, where the fourth player is selected from the runner-up team.
In this match, the two leading contenders for the England call-up were unbeaten on four wins each as they faced each other in what everybody knew was a showdown match which turned out to be a thriller.
Team Ashby comprised Dean Ashby, Scott Ashby (the sub in this match), Rowland Jones and Jason White. The Ashby brothers and White represented England at the last European Championships in Alberville in 2023, where on that occasion, Rowland was the team coach with Reece Gould being the fourth member of the team. The team progressed to the Top 16 stage of that tournament, losing to a strong Swedish team.
Team Huntley comprised Sam Blakey, Ben Gallimore (the sub in this match), Jeremy Huntley and Kai Sheffield. All these players are former senior England internationals except Kai who has played at youth and espoirs level. Jeremy had the most recent representation, playing at the FIPJP World Championships in Dijon in 2024. He competed in the Precision Shooting and was ranked 9th in world with a two round total of 64 points.
The match was live-streamed to P365’s Facebook Group and you can watch the video by clicking the image below. This is not broadcast quality as it was filmed via the local mobile network. Hopefully you can still enjoy the match!
We’ve also done our own statistical analysis of the match which is summarised below. This is based on the ‘effective boule’ system, where credit is given to individual points or shots which are successful and mean the opponents have to play the next boule. We exclude lead points that are beaten by the opponents either by being outpointed by the opponent’s first point. We also exclude shots that do not result in the opponents being forced to play.
We also show the ‘Aggression’ factor, which is the percentage of boules that are shot. This proportion is affected by tactical considerations and you can be as aggressive as you like, but winning is only achieved by successful execution! It is worth noting that at top international level, it is not unusual in the modern game to routinely see 60%+ of total boules as shots.
This analysis is very helpful in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of players and teams and is also revealing in terms of comparing performance with that which is achieved by leading international players at major championships. Generally, to be competitive at the highest levels, a 70%+ performance is required, although it is not uncommon to see the world’s best players performing at 80%+, often at ends at 9m or more and on surfaces which demand the highest technical skills of lob pointing and boule-to-boule shooting.
All our videos are free to view but are not for commercial use. The videos are produced by P365’s volunteer streamers who are entirely self-funded. In this video, our streamer is Tim Edwins.
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Thanks for your support and enjoy the video!
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