Following a very successful weekend competing at the EPA Inter-Regional Championships and Challenge Tournament in Hayling Island Hampshire, the "Main" Sussex Petanque squad finished as runners-up in Division 2 of the Inter-Regional Championship and are therefore promoted to Division 1 for next years event. This is a magnificent acheivement and the first time in the regions history that Sussex have been in Division 1 of the Main Championship. Well done and congratulations to everyone involved in the squad.
As the final standings table shows, Sussex were top of the division after day 1 and finished second in the day 2 results table. In the combined overall results, Sussex narrowly missed out on winning the division but were well clear of the region in third place. The Sussex number 8 team was also the third best performing team out of the forty eight teams that competed in the division.
Also worth a very special mention are the Sussex Junior squad who competed at the Inter-Regional Championships. They were only formed earlier this year and have only played a handful of competitive matches together. This is the first time for a number of years that Sussex has been able to field a Junior squad made up of Sussex Petanque Association members. They competed against nine other regions and finished in a very creditable 8th place. As the final standing table shows, they were tied on four wins with three other regions in a very tight finish.
After gaining promotion to Division 1 of the Challenge Tournament last year, the Sussex Challenge squad found the quality of the opposition at this level a little too high and sadly finished 7th out of the eight teams in the division and so will be relegated back into division 2 for next years event.
A more comprehensive report on Sussex at the Inter-Regional Championships including photos and detailed results will appear on this website shortly.
The full set of official results from this years Inter-Regional Championships are now available on the EPA website . . . http://www.englishpetanque.org.uk/results.html