Ouagadougou, The Atlas Lions of Morocco bowlers won Sunday night at Ouaga 2000 Sports Palace in the capital of Burkina Faso on 8 th African championship of petanque, beating the Stallions B boulistes by the score of 13 points to 6.
The Moroccan team got off to a good start from the start by removing 3 points from the first lead. Burkina Faso responded by scoring 6 points, i.e. 2 points in the 2 nd lead, 3 points in the 3 rd lead and 1 point in the 4 th leading.
After these 6 points garnered by the Burkinabè triplet, there was an interruption of 7 minutes. The Moroccan side having considered that the Burkinabè supporters demonstrated too much against its players while the regulations do not allow it.
One of the organizers, in particular the former president of the CSC Mathias Tankoano, had to come down from his official platform to calm the enthusiasm.
“The time out played in their (Moroccans: editor’s note) favor then that we were leading when the Moroccans asked for a time out. If there hadn’t been this downtime we would easily win Morocco. You will have noticed that we were leading 6-3 and after the time out we no longer had any points, ”regretted the Stallion boules trainer Madi Ouédraogo.
His player Augustin Compaoré let it be known that “this is how the game of pétanque is. You can start well and end badly. This is what happened to us ”.
The Moroccan team then set their own pace and did not concede any more points to the Burkinabè with a final score of 13 to 6.
Morocco’s coach Abdelatif finds that “Burkina Faso has a difficult team to beat. What made us win is that I decided to change two of my players to put them back in the game ”.
In the small final, Chad dominated Madagascar by 13 to 11. In this meeting the Malagasy led by 11 to 1 before Chad made a spectacular comeback to win the game.
10 of the 16 nations that took part in the competition (from November 4 to 7) have qualified for the world championship scheduled for 2022 in Benin. These are Burkina Faso (team number 1 and number 2), Niger, Tunisia, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Chad and Madagascar.
Source: Burkina Information Agency