El Ejido, not far from Almeria in southern Spain is the venue for the bi-annual FIPJP World Singles, Doubles and Mixed Doubles which brings together some 49 nations from Algeria to Wales.
This is only the second time that this tournament has taken place (the inaugural event having taken place in Ghent, Belgium in 2017) and the selected England team of Sofiane Lachani, Emma Longstaff, Monty Quaia and Sammy Thatcher begin their matches on Thursday 2ndMay.
The format of the tournament allows for one of our male and female players to compete in the Singles, while the other two play in the Mixed Doubles. There is then the same sex Doubles. Monty Quaia and Sammy Thatcher, respectively the highest ranked players in our Male and Female 2018 Singles Rankings have been chosen to compete in the Singles, leaving Sofiane Lachani and Emma Longstaff to contest the Mixed Doubles.
The FIPJP uses the Swiss System in the early stages of its tournaments to find the top players and teams (usually 16) for the knockout stages. In these qualifying stages, there will be timed games of 45 minutes for the Singles and 1 hour for the Doubles.
A minimum of two extra ends are played should the match be tied at the point the whistle is blown to signal that time is up, and if there is a still a tie after these extra ends, a third and conclusive end is played where the jack cannot go dead (it is marked and replaced if it does leave the pitch). It’s important to note the rule that the next end commences after the final boule of the previous end has been thrown, not when the jack is thrown to start the next end
If 2017 is anything to go by, this will be a very demanding tournament for our players, with long days and where managing downtime between matches is very important. Our two highly experienced coaches Nic Baxter and Rowland Jones will be on hand to ensure that our team is well-supported.
The playing order has already been set and our sister Spanish Federation, the FEP has made arrangements for the live coverage of the tournament. The details are available on PE’s official Facebook page, where we also plan to feature livestreaming of our players in action.
The first match to feature will be the Men’s Singles at 0900 Spanish time (0800 UK time) on Thursday 2ndMay.
Make sure you visit the PE website and Facebook page for regular news and updates including the initial draw which will take place on Wednesday evening (1stMay). Good luck to our English players, their coaches and Head of Delegation, Annette Eggleton.