Bouligans Jersey Adventure

With the sun bursting through the clouds for the first time in what seemed like many weeks, The Booligans set sail on the overnight ferry to Jersey to compete for the Wales Squad in The Home Nations 2024 against England, Jersey and Scotland. 

The competition has been running since the millennium so was now in its 24th year – during that time, England had won every single year and often at quite some margin. We can willfully remind everyone how much bigger their pool of players is and of their financial support and training setup etc, but none of that would matter come the day. We still had to try our absolute best in order to make a mark in this tournament. 

Success in the qualifiers resulted in Wales Team 1, comprising of Daz, Did and Joe and Wales Team 4 with Alvarro, Dan and Lacey. 

We all knew we would face some of the toughest competition we’d seen after competing in the lower groups of the same competition the previous year. This time, as we were in the Team A squad, we were well aware of the mountain we would have to climb as we would face far better teams than we had previously. 

The venue was slap bang in the centre of town, overlooked by bars, restaurants and passers-by and that extra audience added pressure that was palpable in the air. The pistes were flat and fast, but in many places littered with larger stones just waiting to steer you off course and with intermittent heavy rainfall, players from all 4 nations were feeling under the cosh. 

After an arduous 12 hour day of pétanque on Saturday we were exhausted. Wales 1 had overrun on nearly every game and had a 15 minute timed lunch, it was our only break of the day.

Wales 1 had lost every game on day 1, but Wales 4 had skillfully managed to win 2, including a great win against the second best England team. However, we felt battered and bruised and returned to base to eat, rest and plan for the next day. 

Sunday felt different. We woke to blazing sunshine and a renewed energy (despite having just a few hours sleep after unwisely playing a little game of evening poker) we all felt fired-up and ready to go.

On Day 1, Wales 1 had faced all of the third and fourth teams from the other nations and on Day 2 we were to face all of the first and second teams, so we knew it was going to be a very tough battle. We hadn’t quite played at this level before. The competition was split as per usual – a battle between England and Jersey at the top and a separate battle between Scotland and Wales in the bottom half. Although this time, it being on their home soil, Jersey were putting in an excellent all round performance and were starting to breathe down the neck of the England Squad on the results table. 

Without a word spoken the Wales Squad knew we now had a separate side mission – beat England and help Jersey pinch the cup for the first time. 

Soon both Wales 1 and 4 started racking up the wins. Something clicked on Day 2 and all those small margins that seemed to go the other’s way started to flow with us. We all raised our game and suddenly we were becoming fierce competition regardless of who we faced. 

Although Wales 1 lost 13-2 to Jersey 2 in the first game, we went on to win every other game that day. Apart from Jersey 2, we beat the top 2 teams from every other nation, including the formidable England 1 who hadn’t lost a game all weekend and rarely lose at any competition. We rattled them with some incredibly accurate pointing from Joe and Did and some great shooting from Daz including a masterful shot to win the game at 13-12. We became unstoppable. 

The win over England 1 and 2 on Sunday was a major tipping point, with Jersey closing the gap, it meant that we had given them a huge boost. 

Meanwhile Wales 4 faced some very tough battles with some great victories and very close losses that could have gone either way. With 4 hard fought wins on their Day 2 they ended up with a brilliant total of 6 wins and Wales 1 had a total of 5 wins. 

As all the games finally finished, the scores were being added and there was a buzz amongst Jersey, Wales and Scotland as we were all wondering if England had finally been beaten. 

It was announced that Jersey had won the Home Nations by 2 games. For the first time in 24 years England had been pipped at the post and it was clear that our last 2 wins against England had made a vital impact. 

In the final presentation Wales 4 had won The Best Team in Wales award and Al, Dan and Lacey were all given a trophy each. It was a fantastic achievement especially given the fact that Lacey and Dan (after a hiatus) had only been playing for a couple of years and there is a wealth of experience in the rest of the Welsh Squad. 

We were swarmed by Jersey players and family members who were grateful in recognition of our wins helping them to lift the trophy and as Daz pointed out ‘I’m sure if we ask the mayor, he will offer us the key to St Helier’. 

The final scores were:

Jersey 64 wins

England 62 wins

Scotland 40 wins

Wales 26 wins

This ended up being the same total Wales got the previous year. We were delighted that from Wales’ 26 wins that our 2 teams had won 11 of them. 

It’s clear that we have a lot of room for progression and improvement in this competition, but for now we are delighted to have played our own part in the Jersey win, to have proudly represented Wales and to have made many new friends across the UK pétanque scene. 

We hope to be back next year, but for anyone reading this, would you want to play a part too? Would you feel proud to represent Wales in a National tournament? With many members from Llandaff and neighbouring Harlequins entering various competitions across Wales, it won’t be long before we have many more friendly, familiar faces travelling far and wide to compete on a National or even International stage. We feel the future for our club and for Welsh Pétanque is looking bright. 

Lots of love,

The Booligans x