No referees, this Monday morning, on the bowling alleys of the Marseillaise pétanque world championship 2024: a sign of protest after the assault, on Sunday, of one of them. At the end of a match, this female referee, who this year is the 18th edition of refereeing at this tournament, found herself violently attacked by a team made up of unlicensed players. While she was awarding the 13th point during a match, which is the signal of victory for the winning team, the losers demonstrated first noisily, then more violently, to the point of resorting to death threats and physical intimidation, bringing in other people to be able to fight.
The bowling green, “a reflection of today’s society”
It was the intervention of a player from the winning team, a plainclothes police officer who filmed the scene with his phone, that narrowly prevented things from getting out of hand. The organizers then sent in additional referees and security guards to restore calm. Patrick Grignon, national president of pétanque referees, explains this burst of violence: “Petanque is only a reflection of today’s society, which is a chaotic society, where many people can no longer respect the rules, like on football pitches.“To stop this phenomenon, he decided to withdraw his referees from the competition for a morning, while the national federation announced that it would file complaints against these players, who have already been banned from the competition.
“They are thugs”
For Patrick Grignon, it is also necessary, in society, to know how to respect the rules and the sporting spirit: “We can’t call them athletes, but they are thugs. For me, these types of individuals have no place on pétanque grounds.”
The referee who was attacked was obviously shocked, but she insisted on returning to the field on Monday afternoon, so as not to penalize the rest of the players: more than 4,000 this year, and almost all of whom respect the rules of the game. According to the organization, this type of incident remains very exceptional in this gathering, where the rest of the matches took place without a hitch.
