Congratulations!
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 AATBL Season 2025 ready to erupt into life, the sporting world asks itself:
- How the hell did HRH Prince Andrew II win the presidential election?
- Will the league cope with having to play two rounds in Fremantle?
- How many team names are cunningly disguised anagrams? Is it true that Big Wheelers will wear T-shirts emblazoned with aggressive gerbils?
- Will Motherchucker continue to taunt Andy for the whole season about the election being stolen?
- Is our auditor and election scrutineer, Angus Cheeseberger, on the take?
- Why won’t all AATBL games be on free-to-air television this season?
- Is there anything in the guidelines about the extent to which a player can have prosthetic, implanted, robotic or bionic body parts? Is artificial indifference allowed?
- Barney is due for the Asti again in 2025. As he’s partnered with Cannonball (one of the current Grand Bocce holders), has Cannonball hitched himself to the wrong wagon or can he lead Barney down the path to glory?
- Is there a hint of a road trip in the league’s tea leaves?
Countdown to next match: