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 

The 2014 championships were held in fantastic weather at Brighton & Hove Petanque Club on Sunday 7th September. There was a field of 13 players for the Singles with a league format in the morning decided the rankings for the afternoon main and plate knockout competitions. 

Following some keenly contested and good quality games in the leagues and the knockout rounds Jeff Mitchell beat Ian Maynard  13 - 5 in the final of the Main competition to become Singles Champion for 2014, while in the final of the Plate competition Dave Court beat Les MacDonnell  13 - 9.  It's been a good year for Jeff who as well as being Singles champion was also in the winning Sussex Doubles and Sussex Triples teams. 

The Shooting championships were run alongside the Singles competition (thanks to Dawn Constable & Lindsey MacDonnell for their help in running the Shooting competition). Players completed each of the five disciplines over distances of 6, 7, 8 & 9 metres with points scored depending on how the target was hit and moved. Tony Mann is the 2014 Shooting Champion with a score of 19 while Steve Mortimer was runner-up with a score of 18. 
Both Tony and Steve will be able to represent the region in the shooting competition at this years EPA Champion of Champions in Oxshott, Surrey over the weekend of 11th/12th October