Wish me luck, fellow forumites, I'm about to take France on at their own game...

[Horsebox]

...no, not striking or surrendering or eating cheese.

It is in fact petanque!

I'm off to Marseille in the morning with a motley crew of merry men.

(and women).

Once there we shall compete in the Mondiale de Petanque de Marseille.

It kicks off on Sunday and is something of a knockout tournament so if we don't win our first game then it's an early Pastis bath for the chaps.

I'll report back next week and let you all know how we got on.

A bientot...

Horse

[giggirl]

I have no clue what you're talking about but the best of luck - GO THRASH THE FRENCH!

[Michael Palaeologus]

If you lose, will they eat you? Being a horse and all...

[????]

A famous horse, "L'Escargot", would have lasted seconds in France

[Michael Palaeologus]

Shergar has been seen en France - in Auchan at E12 per kilo.

[????]

lol..very good

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Cher boite de cheval

Stick it to 'em.

[mockney piers]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1061&Itemid=59

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Sod 'em. Just lay all your bling on the ground - recreate the Field of Gold - and dazzle 'em.

[RosieH]

Field of gold, field of gold, vive la petanque anglaise, allez lez chevaux!!!

The irony of a mondiale in marseilles is a rich seam, wherein more poetic than me could plough, but am un petit peu ivree, so only courage mon brave.Am a cheese-eating-surrender-monkey-ophile, but if we can beat them at the boudin noir, we can sure as hell take the metal ball challenge to them.

[RosieH]

Erm sorry, i'd had some ale. But yay for the British petanquers

[muffintop]

Go horsebox, go horsebox, go horsebox

(does big double handed clockwise rotational circles in front of bod!)

[benjaminty]

Good luck Mr Box!

Is there any online coverage we can get to monito your progression through each round?

[david_carnell]

Having looked into this.....it's some sort of Boule World Cup!

Does this mean Horsebox plays to a national level in flinging metal balls into gravel? How awesome....where do I sign up for next years?

[Brendan]

Is this a sign that the English have given up on ever beating anyone again at one of their own sports so now they?re having a bash at ones invented in other nations?

[david_carnell]

More a sign that we no longer see former colonials as much of a threat at anything anymore so we now plan to dominate at other nation's national games.

If only the Safas had managed to get round to inventing a sport rather than having to play all of ours we could go on a trip there but in the meantime we look forward to an easy test series this summer....

....led by our best player, a South African.

Ummm, I'm sure I had a point here somewhere???

[Brendan]

Hopefully the South African leadership will stop the English team from taking their ball away and locking themselves in the dressing room until our nasty fast bowlers go away or promise to play nice.

Anyway sorry about the silly buggers on your thread Hosebox (I think we've got one somewhere for sledging) Best of luck in France.

[Keef]

Please walk up and ask in a posh voice if you're in the right place for the crown green.

[mattham]

I got all excited then ? thought you were in the Tour de France. Well, chapeau anyway ??Bon Courage.

[Ted Max]

This looks heaps and heaps and heaps of fun. Horsebox, did you meet any of the clebs in the video?

And there's sort of a mention for you here:

"Des joueurs venus des quatre coins de la France et de plus loin encore. Quatre-vingt-sept d?partements sont cette ann?e repr?sent?s, quatre de plus que l?an pass?. Les DOM-TOM ? travers la Martinique et la R?union seront pr?sents aussi. Pour cette 47e ?dition, 12 nations prendront le d?part : des p?tanqueurs venus de Suisse, d?Alg?rie, du Portugal, de Belgique, ou d?Angleterre? (voir ci-contre)"

[Horsebox]

It was massive fun and as expected we went crashing out in the first round, 13-1, but at least we didn't have to kiss fanny .

Didn't meet any celebs, Ted Max, but did see the eventual winners play in the semi final in the vieux port, which was a very good match.

Talking of celebs, It seems that as we were the only English team registered, the sports desk from La Marseillaise newspaper sent a local hack down to cover the game and do a small piece on our team which is more of a result than we got in the game itself :)-D

You can read it here