The 2014 Home Nations was held and Mansfield Petanque Club on 9th and 10th August.
The teams arrived on Friday 8th August and many headed to the pistes for a practice, to find them waterlogged after torrential rain. With practice impossible, the socialising started early!
The Scots, Welsh and English players arrived at the well manicured pistes at 8am on the Saturday morning, to find no sign of the flooding from the night before. An army of volunteers from Mansfield PC had clearly been up early to prepare the pistes and catering – a sterling job and much appreciated by the players. After welcome speeches and photographs the games commenced at 9 am. The weather forecast for Sunday was very poor and therefore it was decided to play 7 rounds on the Saturday as a contingency against delays on Sunday.
As play commenced on Sunday heavens opened and, by the end of round 8 almost all the pistes were waterlogged and unplayable, despite the pump. A meeting of the heads of delegations was hastily arranged and it was reluctantly agreed that play could not continue and the competition would be cut short to 8 rounds. A disappointing end to what was otherwise a great weekend.
In the end, many of the Scottish teams struggled with a total of 24 wins across the squad. The English team did what they needed to with 43 wins and the Welsh held a solid second place on 29.
Notable exceptions were the Scotland 2 team of Lynn, Shirley and Robbie who amassed 6 wins from 8 to be the top Scottish team of the weekend, closely followed by Scotland 6 Christine and John Mudd and Gordon and Pat Scott who secured 5 wins.
The SPA would like to thank all of the volunteers from Mansfield PC and the English Petanque Association for their hard work during the weekend. It was sad that they were beaten by the elements in the end, but their efforts and planning were greatly appreciated.