Liz wins FAST* trophy

Rob, Barry, Alison, Phil S, Liz & Peter formed an all play all block. Only a couple of games went to time, everyone had their moment in the Sunshine. The result needed tie break Buchholtz points: Alison 6, Phil 5, Liz 6 and Rob 5. Since Liz had beaten Alison, she was declared the winner.

Phil McCardin writes: The grass here today was in great shape, the lawns running fast (no pun intended). My highlights of the day? Alison's well constructed winning Rover peel. Rob making a third turn break to peg with 1 bisque look like a piece of cake. Liz escaping from a good leave with a beautiful angled jump shot followed by a hit in and finish. Phil's cool head all day while only having 1.5 bisques against some moderate fences. And of course Peter's Chicken Dhansak lunch. Finally, how close Barry came to winning the trophy. A win in the last game would have made it a five way tie in which, Mr Buchholz, would have declared him the winner.

21st September *Fylde Association Short Tournament.

Phil Wins the Bradshaw

Phil trying to peel rover.

Lee in action today.

18 point game. Phil took first ball to Rover and when Lee missed peeled it but ran into the wire and had to retreat.

Lee playing with all his heart, left a cross-wire at his hoop and a 25 yarder. Which Phil hit. The spectators were wowed by that. Phil pegged out to their applause.

20th September

Kiwi flies in

Scott Wilson from Wellington New Zealand came to the lawns today and was met by Alison, Barry and Rob. Scot extended his thanks to us and says if you are ever near his club you will be most welcome to have a game or two.

16th September

Phil Wins the millennium handicap at chester

8th September

finals day

Beautiful weather today for Alison and Barry setting up the BBQ
and Liz setting up a 'Lawn of Games' with thanks to Bury CC for their equipment and inspiration.

The Tower Trophy

Barry & Alison (7 pegs) playing against Sue & Jude (9 pegs), best of three.

Game 1: Jude levelled the score by running hoop 2 from 19 yards but after a quick game Barry & Alison ran out winners. Phil McArdin arrived and took up the commentary:

Nice for me to be here in these dry conditions. I see hoop five is now being contested at two all. Failed clearance from Alison , Jude scores a six footer. The organisers need to keep in touch now, Jude is hampered getting to six. Barry could have cleared Sue leaving partner with a two footer but puts his ball in the jaws.

REFEREE! Jude plays out of turn and gets sent back. Alison puts partner through. Three all.

INTERFERENCE! As Jude's clearance ricochets off and hits an unattended mallet left on the lawn. Hoop seven goes to Alison running it to within a foot of hoop eight, but leaving a very tight angle. The clear blue we started with has gone a bit cloudy now, is the lawn slowing up a bit?

DOUBLE CLEARANCE! From Barry leaving himself in front of eight sending blue into black at pace and that wins the hoop. Looks to me as if S&J need four hoops, B&A only two. After consultation, Alison declines a double clearance chance and this now looks like advantage S&J, yes, Jude gently runs eight, needed to ensure the point there, so no attempt at running hard to nine, but, has that left the door open?

Alison's approach leaves a two footer. Barry makes the clearance and Sue has an eight yarder, which misses.

WOWZER! Alison makes hoop eleven from the boundary at a forty degree angle to win the match.

Bernard Leather

Alison is now quickly back in action on the short lawn with six bisques to Lee's three peels. Lee is getting a chair and making himself comfortable.

Alison gets to three and five with 3 bisques left. Lee straight peels hoop one but no rush on the peelee to hoop two. Nevertheless he goes to Rover peeling hoop two on the way and lays up. Alison has to react but the break goes wrong and she has spent up.

Lee runs three with a break ahead of him. Partner four feet from Rover for the last peel required as Lee makes his pioneers count coming around now.

FLIRTS WITH THE NORTH BOUNDRY! Lee's deep ball is only just ok, needs bringing on a yard. Jobs a good one, yellow peeled, uses the side escape ball to get himself right behind partner with a good rush on it to the peg. Nicely played by the Machine, text book.

Derek in the Marballs

Lawn of Games

Run by Liz, an individual fun tournament across various challenges. For the speed short lawn GC and the back and forth hoop run, the partners would both get the same score. But for the other games, Marballs, SlopyJoe, long roquet and Target, partner's contribution was only as a ball returner and would later play those games themselves.

Holy smoke! Stewart en route to winning the trophy.

7th September

Tim King in da house!

Our GCers get some tips from Tim.

Brilliant day at the lawns as four Italian Aerospacers get a glimps into the world of Golf Croquet from who better than minus 2 Tim King.

Then our lot decend upon him for some pointers!

1st September

Betty and Lee play Hunstanton

Betty and Lee ventured off for their semi-regular trip to Hunstanton last weekend to play in their bank holiday tournament and sent this report.

Our previous experiences have led us to believe that is that it is called "Sunny Hunny" for no other reason than it rhymes. And even when the sun has threatened to break through it has felt somewhat perishing in the northerly breeze. However, for once the weather gods were on our side, as the east coast largely basked in sunshine and a light southerly breeze whilst the west coast was being battered by storm Lilian.

  On the croquet lawn it was Fylde's dynamic duo who were doing the battering. Betty started off in the handicap tournament by playing the manager and star player Philip Eardley who has a handicap of -2. And she must have feared the worst when he hit in and went round to rover on the 4th turn. Undeterred, Betty used her bisques on the 5th turn not only to go round herself, but also to peel her opponent through rover and peg him out, duly winning the 3 ball ending.

  The pivotal game in the handicap competition came when Betty played Lee. All was going well for Betty until she squandered two bisques after almost garotting herself by getting her mallet caught by her dangly necklace whilst playing a big croquet stroke. This meant that after using her last bisque to posthumously peel rover, Betty was left on peg and peg with Lee on peg and 1. Lee missed and Betty tried a speculative peg out from beyond rover, missing with the front ball but pegging the other ball off. Lee shot at partner but missed again, leaving Betty a 5 yard peg out to win the game. Betty missed, leaving Lee to do a 3 ball break, rover peel and peg out to win +1. And so with both of us ultimately winning 6 handicap games out of 8 if was Lee who got the winner's trophy with Betty the runner up.

  In the class competition Lee was no match for Philip who duly won the A class for the umpteenth year in a row. Betty was on fire in the C class, winning all her 4 games comfortably with all but one being won within the time limit. This gave Betty 10 wins out of 12 over the weekend earning a well deserved handicap reduction from 8 to 6.

August Bank Holiday

The Midgland Tournament

Liz hands over the Midgland to John.

Liz writes:Only 6 competitors for this annual Handicap Golf Croquet Event but that made for an all play all competition. Congratulations to John Proctor on winning all his 5 games and earning a handicap reduction to 10. Ursula also demonstrated the value of all the practice she has been doing by winning 4 / 5. Other competitors Joanne Proctor, Rob and Barbara Bentwood and Helen Frogatt all played with some good shots and really good competition etiquette. It was a pleasure to manage.

4th August 2024

Pendle Midweek full house

Boss manger Liz.

Lee won the doubles partnering Libby Dixon from Pendle. Their strengths complimented each other and they were convincing and worthy winners.

Betty won the Egyptian Trophy after a thrilling Peg v Rover end-game against last years winner, Andrew Gould. Played out on lawn 1 with all the spectators egging both players on.

Peter won the fastest game trophy (43 min 28 sec). This is the sixth time in the last nine years it has visited his mantlepiece.

Of course all this would not have been possible if not for the Boss who managed the seven tournaments that make the week so special.

12th July 2024

Festival Of Croquet

Overall and Handicap Association Winners!

Our rovin' reporda, Lorna Ndawarda writes: It had rained a lot in the early hours, I arrived early in a light drizzle, to find the South Lawns severely puddled and the North rather soggy. However the show must go on and on it did go. After a few hours it stopped raining and the lawns drained quickly. On Sunday, the lawns were in good shape, although a chilly wind came from the North. I investigated the scoring mechanisms, finding that every game won would score points towards the overall championship.

Match Captain Liz writes: Wow - what a brilliant Team effort!
Now the tables are out we find that even those of us who finished well down the leader board in their individual event earned points that made a big difference.

Thank you to the winning handicap AC team. Thank you and hard luck to Alison's short team (You had tough opposition on day 2). Thank you to the two handicap golf ladies who battled on without Barbara and Ted. Thank you especially to Catherine and Philip who took on the big guys! And even knocked Chester off the top spot. And thank you to Peter and his wife who managed to improved from 4th place, on day one to 2nd equal after the one ball.

Presentation by John Haslam: Photo and caption by Catherine.

Peter writes; In the advanced, Liz and I chose to play alternate shot. On Saturday nobody got close to pegging out, mostly due to the waterlogging. We beat Bowdon and lost narrowly to Crake and Bury. On Sunday, we faced everyone else, mano a mano, in Advanced One Ball, we got 6/12 between us.

Alison writes; The short team this year consisted of Alison, Stewart, Benedict ( Saturday ) and Ian ( Sunday ). We were firing on all cylinders on Saturday, only dropping 1 game out of 6 with Benedict & Stewart pairing up for the doubles.

With Crake, Stonyhurst and Bowden out of the way, Sunday proved to be a more difficult day for us facing Bury, Llanfairfechan and Southport - with both Bury and Llanfairfechan close behind us in the table.

Ian and Stewart played the doubles and Alison singles. The first team were Bury and Alison had a good win. We knew that we needed 2 wins in the next round against Llanfairfechan and although Alison had a good start with a 3 ball break, getting to Rover using only 2 bisques, her opponent also made a strong start and peeled a couple of his hoops during his first turn. With a full complement of bisques he won the game 14-10.

Ian and Stewart lost their doubles match to a strong pairing from the Welsh side which included a “bandit”! Our final matches against Southport were very close, Alison should have beaten Tony Thomas as she had plenty of chances to finish and the doubles match was lost in the final minutes with the last hoop scored by Southport in the final seconds.

6 wins and 6 losses sums up a fair result on another very enjoyable festival weekend. Great fun and banter - bring on 2025 !

Catherine writes: Level Play Golf - Philip and Catherine. The eventual score line of one Win doesn’t tell the whole story!! There were a lot of successful clearances and knocking balls back out of hoops at distance but simple hoop scoring let us down! Our opponents, on the other hand, seemed to share the knack of placing their first ball right in front of the next hoop.

Day 1 - no time limits. The first two games were reduced to best of 13. The next two were best of 19. Game 1 - Pendle, the eventually unbeaten-in-seven Trophy winners, won 2-7. Game 2 Crake and Game 3 Bury were closer, 6-7 and 9-10 narrowly missing out at Golden Hoop. We put up a fight in Game 4 - coming back from 1-5 down - but losing 6-10.

Day 2 - 90 minute time limit, best of 19. Determined to get a win, we came through vs Chester who had won all 4 of their games so far 8-7 on time called by the Manager. Game 2 Llanfairfechan, we again fought back from 1-5, final score 5-10. The last Game of the competition, NW Select went to time. After Hoop 15 the score was 7-8. We were first to Hoop 16 and had a chance to Draw level in the last two minutes. Catherine clanked the hoop and Philip’s promotion to block fell short, so, it ended 7-9.

Liz, Peter, Alison, Ian, Ursula, Benedict, Phil, Stewart, Barry, Philip & Catherine. Also Claire and Andrew .

Ursula writes: In the Handicap Golf, Claire and I played doubles and scored 4/8. Ted and Barbara were going to share the games but became unavailable to personal circumstances, so we both stepped in. We both enjoyed meeting new faces and playing against them.

Phil writes: We smashed it nine and a half out of ten. (Draws can only happen at the Festival with guillotine time controls.) A great performance from Andrew in the difficult conditions. Barry was superb with his cool temperament. Benedict was solid as a rock, how good could he become with more time spent on the lawns.

Andrew (not in shot), Barry, Phil S (capt), and Benedict, unbeaten in ten games!

29th & 30th June 2024

Martins Meadow is thriving today.

The Boss sends a photo.

31st May 2024

verti cutting

Barry and Robert treated lawns 1 & 3 to a dose of verti cutting while Liz followed with the Hayter.

13th May 2024

NWFCC Golf Handicap Winners 2023

The League Manager aka our own Phil Snowden, dropped in to make the presentations to the Falcons! Somewhat belated due to the weather problems towards the end of 2023. The North/South final was abandoned, in favour of sharing the win. A new Trophy Cabinet page has been created along these lines...

Unbeaten! Derek, Ted, Captain Barbara Lindsay, Alison and Betty. Also Don and Barry.

2023 GC HCP - NORTHPWLDGAMES
W-L		POINTS
Fylde Falcons650168-4011
Crake Valley642061-478
Bury North632162-487
Pendle & Craven632155-527
Westmorland614146-633
Fylde Coasters614144-643
Bury South614143-643

10th May 2024

New players at taster session

Six new players arrived for the taster session run by Liz.

6th May 2024

Falcons swoop on league trophy

Fylde Falcons have been awarded joint winners of the North West Federation Handicap Golf League.

The trophy will be presented to them a week on Friday 10th May by the league manager (Phil Snowden) at 3.30.
The Captain of the team invites you all to join the triumphant team for a glass of prosecco.

A new page in our trophy cabinet will appear thereafter.

2nd May 2024

Hoop setting, flag erecting

Winning the toss, Barbara opened the season with this shot.

Lorna Ndawarda reports on the permissions extended to our teams saying The lawns remain closed at the moment, but with last year's delayed final approaching, The Falcons team are allowed to practice on lawn 5. The Coasters team have a league opener against the (warmed up) Falcons and consequently are also allowed practice on lawn 5.

Meanwhile, Philip repaired the Dennis clutch and Ian fitted the new flagpole, Liz, Barry, Ursula and Peter set the full lawn hoops and short lawns 1,2,3 and 4. It was a slick operation. Liz and Ursula moving the tape up the lawns, Peter and Barry placing the hoops at the measurements called out.

14th April 2024

Some progress

Rachael is behind the camera.

Philip and Liz report from the lawns today.
Eleven members responded to the call to action on Sunday afternoon. The weather was kind (sunshine - what's that?) and most of the tidying of the West boundary of lawn 5 was finished. This included quite a severe hacking of overhanging branches. Lawn 5 was mowed and is now ready for white lining and hoop setting. All lawns were moved and the corners set. Lawn 3 was also mowed but both 3 and 1 are far too wet to consider play yet. Many thanks to Lindsay, Sue, Jude, Ursula, Rachel, Barbara, Ted, Phil and John, we really appreciate it.

7th April 2024

it's magic

Christening the new dumping area. Lawns dry enough for mowing action, the first cut is the deepest.
Memo to Reuters: The Webmeister reserves the right to occasionally use photographic enhancement techniques.

24th March 2024

Club Spirits

Tinker, Taylor, Plumber, Cleaner, Painter, Clearer.

A great turn out today, in cool but Sunny climes. The Boss was behind the camera today. Heath, our new groundsman, cleared the ditch and it was flowing freely, the lawns now feeling firmer underfoot.

24th March 2024

Lorna Ndawarda reports

Travelling across the moss the flooding is as bad as we have ever seen it, but our lawns, although soggy, are draining well. We have a new member of the ground staff team. A young man named Heath who will be doing the mowing this season. Heath will also be working with Philip in the coming months towards opening the lawns and facilities. Ian has painted the hoops and they are back in the green box. Some balls are also there in newly repaird and painted carriers. But hold fast! do not hurry down to hit some balls yet! There is a lot to do to get the lawns running and the current water levels is preventing us making a start. Perhaps we have invented a new way of measuring how wet the lawns are. These hoops were dropped from 2 feet above the ground and have all sunk a uniform amount into it. They are showing the wetness of the ground to be 3 'Ndawadas'.

15th March 2024

Correction to newspaper reports regarding the future of our club

South Shore Lawn Tennis Club (SSLTC) in Blackpool provides the space for our lawns. Many of you have been over here a few times, so you’re probably aware!

A private investor, in liaison with SSLTC, has applied for permission to build indoor padel courts on land currently occupied by two full (four short) lawns. 

Unfortunately, the local paper, 'The Gazette', has published a web article which wrongly implies that this means Croquet will be no more at SSLTC. People in NW Fed have been asking what’s happening.

– It is expected that nothing will change for 2024 season. So, League fixtures etc continue.

– From 2025 we will be relocated to other grassy areas. SSLTC are offering to help with ground preparation of new areas.

– there is ongoing discussion about accommodating our equipment and other facilities.

Planning details can be found here.

The Commitee FCC 18th January 2024

Curry Sunday

We were twenty people at the Red Fort Lytham. Many others unable to attend were away in warmer climates. Thank you to our Social Secretary!

14th January 2024

Business as usual

To clear her head after her party last night, FCC's rovin reporda, Lorna Ndawarder, has taken a bracing walk around the courts this morning. She texted: 'Happy New Year from me and the team. I was super worried after the major winds, thunder and storms, there would be flooding or damage. But I am delighted to say all lawns were only a little soggy and all structures in fine fettle.'

1st January 2024

annual dinner

The St Annes Masonic hall decked us out in Royal Blue and looked after us in the beautiful room with great food and wonderful service.

Founding Father Geoffrey made trophy presentations galore and too many to mention, you need to visit our honours page for all the details. Your eyes do not decieve you, that is the Longman Cup back in our hands! Drop in on our trophy cabinet (or scroll down here) to read all about our winning efforts this year.

Thanks to all those providing raffle prizes and for Jan, Allison and The Boss for working towards this wonderful evening. Alan, Betty and Ian gave us some music and allowed everyone to join in with the comb and paper.

25th November 2023

The 2023 News Is Archived Here

1st January 2024