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 the ancient game 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 only one round of the league’s home-and-away season remaining, and with the finals tantalisingly close, the sporting world asks itself:
- What was the outcome of the Stewards’ Inquiry into the Pixie the dachshund scandal?
- Can Brad pull off the Asti three-peat in 2026?
- Can The Singularity achieve a miracle win in 2026, thereby handing SNHDT his second Grand BOCCE three-peat?
- Some players have been less than fully gruntled with the fixturing this year. Something about AFL fixtures apparently. Is whining now OK?
- Has Motherchucker finally beaten his Mrs Herbert’s Park hoodoo?
- Brad published a book of interviews when he was president. Motherchucker provided ice-creams. Will President Cannonball offer any kind of trinkets, bribes or tasty comestibles to the membership between now and the AGM?
- When Banker finally managed to break into song again in Round 7, he secured a glorious win. Will he conclude that he wins if he sings? Will he inflict more of the same upon us in games to come?
Countdown to next match: