Practise

If there are any practise routines that you do not understand, or if in doubt ask the coach to explain.

Pointing: The pointer who can accurately lob and judge the terrain will be more accurate than the player rolling over stony ground.

Choose the landing spot carefully especially when playing on any sort of uneven, stony terrain. Practise landing on a given spot. For this exercise, don’t worry too much about where the boule finishes. Concentrate on picking a spot and developing the skill and accuracy to land on it.

Select landing spots at different distances 6, 8 and 10 metres, vary the distant each day of practise.

An extremely useful skill and a real test of accurate pointing is being able to move the jack away from the opponents’ boules towards your own. One exercise for this is to put the jack between 2 boules with a 3rd boule behind. The objective is to point and move the jack towards the 3rd boule. To make it even harder, narrow the gap between the two front boules.

Practise the 3 methods of pointing as outlined in Techniques, Rolling, Half-lob and Full-lob.

Practise each of these at different distances. To make things more interesting and to provide some measure of progress, draw a 50cm and 1m diameter circle around the jack and score 5, 10 and 15 at 6, 8 and 10m for getting inside the outer circle, double for the inner circle.

Shooting: 3 boules in a line, spaced apart, practice gently lobbing on to the middle boule. Practise at different distances. When it gets too easy, move the boules closer together.

Practise each of the exercises at different distances 6, 8 and 10 metres. Start at 6 metres on the first day and vary the distance each day of practise.

One point to bear in mind is that if you only learn to shoot at 6m the opponents will play a 10m jack and you’ll be in trouble.

Final pointers:
- start with a good back swing, both arms behind you, lean forward, bend knees, as you bring both arms forward, straighten knees and lean back, with a high release let the boule roll along the straightened fingers.

- lob high enough for the boule to clear the front boule and land on the middle boule

- shooting should be a gentle, relaxed throw, not a great effort to throw the boule as hard as possible. If it takes a lot of effort you may be doing it incorrectly.