CEO's Corner

I had intended to write this newsletter more often, but two eye operations have slowed me down over the last few months. I am glad to tell you that all that is behind me and my eyes are fully operative for the first time in almost

6 years. For those of you who have beaten me on the pistes in various tournaments over the last few years, take note. I am now positively dangerous!

Much has happened over the last few months, but I want to tell you about just a few of the happenings in our petanque scene in NZ in each of these CEO’s Corners – rather than cover all the topics at a time. I intend to make the CEO’s Corner a more regular feature of our year.

I guess the first thing of note has been the attendance at the World Championships, in Pattaya, Thailand of our team of Murray Porter, Ron Sandilands & Simon Faby. The team was ably managed by David Lippard.

This year we have been fortunate in being able to obtain all the major funding required to send a team to the World Championships. This fortunate result has been the result of a lot of hard work on the part of Joanne Lippard in her role of Sponsorship and PR Director on the Management team of the PNZ. We will be placing the small surplus into a designated account to assist NZ teams to participate in future international events (including those held in New Zealand)

Our team to Pattaya has acquitted itself well, and has represented our sport with dignity and enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Christian Fouquet who acted as our Chef de Mission at the FIPJP meetings at Pattaya. Christian kept in close contact with me throughout the tournament via emails, and we were able to make some good contacts in the FIPJP organisation for future benefit to NZ, thanks to his efforts.

This year we also had two teams at the Singapore Championships – our World Championships team (en route to Pattaya), and another team consisting of David Lippard, Georgio Vakauta & Andre Noel. Both these teams had some success at this tournament.

You may be aware that we have invited a French team led by Victor Nataf, the French selector, to visit NZ in Jan/Feb 2008. The itinerary for this visit is still being finalised, and when it is complete it will be published on the website. Unfortunately, the visit is so brief that we can only fit in activities in the North Island. The itinerary will include play in Auckland, Rotorua and Wellington, and will revolve around tournament play, demonstrations, coaching and master classes.

There has been some debate about whether the PNZ should accept an invitation to send a team to the World Championships every year, or whether we should only send a team to the Worlds every second year. This debate was fully canvassed throughout the organisation, and at the recent Executive/Council meeting it was decided to continue to send a team every year.

There was a positive result to the debate because the meeting also decided to improve the preparation of the team going to the championships by enhancing our coaching capability at the top of our sport and using other facilities in NZ to better prepare our chosen players for world class competition.

Since my last CEO’s Corner, we have continued to develop our umpiring and coaching programs, and we now have a large number of umpires who can stand at club competitions and a number who are qualified to Regional competition level. Our thanks to Andy Gilbert for his work in this area.

We have also taken a good number of interested players to Stage 2 coaching level, and will be setting up the same programs in the South Island shortly. My thanks to Neil Goodwin and David Lippard for establishing the 'Performance Enhancement Programme'.

I was one of the coaches who attended the programme at Kapiti Club. Many of the coaches who attended this training at Kapiti have now established 'Performance Enhancement Groups' (PEGs) in their own clubs.

I have a group of 19 members of the Horowhenua Club in my PEG, and they have been enthusiastic about the effect of the coaching on their own performance on the pistes, and on their growing enjoyment of the sport.

Bryan Wells

CEO, PNZ

back to top

Hello to all members of Petanque New Zealand! Welcome to this, the first edition of the 'CEO's Corner'. I have wanted to improve the communication between the Executive of our sport and our members for some time, and I thought that this could be the best way to do it. I will use this website to talk to you about topical subjects of interest, and to tell you about our plans for the future.

Before I start, I want to make sure that you all appreciate that this 'Corner' is about your CEO talking to the wider petanque community. It will not necessarily contain 'official' statements and announcements (which will appear elsewhere in this website).

This is about me talking to you about matters that concern me about the sport in NZ. I would also like your feedback or input about anything that interests you in our community.

My email address is: bawells(at)xtra.co.nz

There is so much that is positive that is happening in the petanque world in NZ that it is hard to know where to start.

We, in the Executive, have taken a number of initiatives, which are starting to bear fruit. Our Director of Coaching Neil Goodwin has spearheaded a coaching initiative, together with the other trained coaches who attended the Grade two Coaching Course in Melbourne recently.

So we have seen David Lippard and Neil undertaking a 2-day 'Performance Enhancement Course' at the Kapiti Club, assisted by Michael Rocks, for interested members of the WPA. I was one of the members who undertook this course, and you will see the report on this course on this website.

The attendees were asked by Neil & David to take the course content back to their clubs and establish a Performance Enhancement Group (PEG) to pass on the training to their club members.

I will be running the first of five sessions with 20 club members from my club, the Horowhenua Pétanque Club next Tuesday, 7th June 2007. We hope to get Neil and his team down to the South Island some time this year.

I would recommend this course to anyone wanting to take their game forward. The material is excellent and the course is run in very professional and interesting manner.

On another subject, we are now seeing qualified umpires starting to take up their positions in clubs around the country. We want to see qualified umpires at every club in the PNZ.

I see these umpires as being the source of information on the correct interpretation of the rules for club players - and in particular being the club players who take the new entrants to the petanque scene at club level to one side and introduce them to the rules at an early stage of their membership.

Andy Gilbert, our Director of Umpiring, has done a great job in writing the examinations and organising the latest batch of 30 budding umpires to the skills required to make a good arbiter.

Another initiative we have taken is to appoint Trevor Neilson to the position of Tournament Director. Trevor is currently preparing a questionnaire which will go to all Regional Associations and clubs to ask them for feedback on some issues surrounding the running of our major tournaments .

I am excited at the prospect of a visit by a French team in 2008. It is early days yet, and I don't know if we can pull it off. Suffice it to say that the Executive has agreed to extend the invitation after an initiative by Dirk Winnie who spoke to a French official about the prospect at the recent Trans Tasman Tournament.

The invitation has been extended to the French Federation, and they have replied in a positive fashion. We will now have to wait and see if their budget finances stack up, and we will not know for certain until later in the year. (See elsewhere in this website for more details).

One topical subject has been the saga of the 4th player to the World Championships. This subject has been exhaustively covered on the so-called 'NZ Petanque Club' blog site, so I will not go over it all again.

There is no doubt that the subject has caused a lot of negativity amongst a small group in the petanque scene, even to the extent that a few people have attacked the successful team, in the belief that they had caused the problem with the selection of the 4th player in the team.

I can assure you that the Triples team had nothing to do with the way in which this subject unfolded. It is easy to believe that there is a great degree of disquiet throughout the PNZ over this issue, but a moment's reflection will show that the great majority of club members did not see the 4th player saga as being a major issue for them.

While in hindsight the criteria for selecting the 4th player were not appropriate, it was set with the best of intentions (ensuring that the 4th player had reached a level of achievement similar to that of the winning team).

The rule was published soon after it was agreed in November 2006, and not one voice of disagreement was heard from anyone. Of course, after the team was chosen, and the 4th player saga began, some armchair Generals have voiced their concerns about the decision made in November 2006.

My message to our members is this: It is easy to let the loud and strident negativity of a few people convince you that there is chaos and dissension in our sport. This is definitely not the case. We have hundreds of members who are getting on with the business of enjoying their sport.

It is a great boost to my morale to visit so many clubs around the country, and to be accepted as just an ordinary player into the camaraderie, and fun of our petanque communities. We have hundreds of volunteers who are working hard to make our ordinary club days, our melees and our National Championships an enjoyable experience for all of us.

We have dedicated officials who put in a lot of time and expertise into managing and administering our sport. These are the people we should be focussing on. They are the real future of our sport.

Bryan Wells

CEO, PNZ