Festival of croquet 2024

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!

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