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You are here – the website of the Australian All-Terrain Bocce League, the spiritual home of the world’s greatest game.   

Based on the action comic book of the same name, the AATBL was initially a TV show in black and white.  Nowadays it has all the colour of the inside of a travel sickness bag and it brings together the world’s finest exponents of a game that requires the wisdom of Solomon, the cunning of a fox, the hide of a rhinoceros, the eye of a newt, the legs of a chair and balls of steel.

There are some who will tell you that the AATBL is merely a vehicle by which a select group of men can get together to drink beer wearing baggy shorts and shirts so tatty they can’t ordinarily be worn in public.  Others will lie to you.

Based in Perth, Western Australia, the AATBL plays on Sunday afternoons in a “home and away” season from February to September, about once a month.

Being a reasonably egalitarian competition, we do not discriminate against any player regardless of how distasteful he may be.  We even have a member who once worked in the Department of Sport and Recreation.

Everyone will make a prediction. Some poor souls may wear self-aggrandising T-shirts.  Only one will take home Glory, and that’s only because it is a soccer team what don’t got no self respect.  None at all.  Play a man’s game for God’s sake.

For the last few seasons, the teams have been re-cast using “the blender” at the end of each season. Players’ names are put into the blender, to randomise the teams for the following season.  For more details of the current teams, see News and Teams.

 

After eight years of playing as a teams-based league, the AATBL changed to a hybrid format in 2021 and now plays with a mix of teams and solo players.

Although it has been suggested that playing as a singleton offers an advantage because those in teams don’t have the advantage of warming up, that hypothesis isn’t supported by the results. Also, a team need only have one player turn up to a fixture, but if a singleton misses a fixture, he forfeits it.

With the just one home-and-away round remaining in AATBL Season 2025, the world asks itself:

• Is it really OK to blatantly try to distract your opponent while he’s taking a shot?
• Brad’s motorcycle manoeuvre has been referred straight to the tribunal. What penalty will he get?
• Will the fact that Brad is the playing partner of President HRH Prince Andrew II help him to get a lenient penalty?
• According to The Sunday Times, Serge engaged lawyers to sue the league for defamation after we reported that he fell asleep standing up at Round 6. Is it true that he actually fell asleep again while he was talking to the lawyers?
• There was a stuff up with the initial reporting of the results of Round 6. How many scandals can Andy’s presidency endure?
• Is it true that Reg tried to claim a win to GFOOBO when he knew the result was a loss?
• Should there be greater scrutiny of the published results?
• It seems that Serge is now not the only league member selling merch at games. Will the new soft toy Motherchucker the Mountaineer turn a profit for the ladder-leading Mochu?
• The finals format has been tweaked, so that only two entities will be in the running for the Asti? Who will they be?

Click below for a message from our patron, HG Nelson.

Countdown to next match: