Category: News

The national level play golf competition was hosted at Chester croquet club on the weekend of August 5^th and 6^th. After some late cancellations, 12 people played for the Maggie Cowman trophy over the two days of play. The final match for the trophy was contested by David Boyd of Tarporley CC and Garry Greenwood of Chester CC. In a best of three format, the winner was Garry Greenwood who received the trophy and a personal medal. As runner up, David received a bottle of the exclusive ‘Sloping Lawn’ wine, vintage 2017. The Chester Bowl was won by Steve Marsh (Bakewell); he received bottle of 2017 ‘Slanting Lawn’. After a very tight final game, Jayne Taylor (Chester) won the Telfords Plate and a bottle of 2017 ‘Tilting Lawn’

Club secretary John Dawson was one of the Croquet Association organisers at the recent BBC Countryfile Live event at Blenheim Palace last week. This is his report:

CROQUET MAKES ITS DEBUT AT COUNTRYFILE LIVE

Countryfile Live is an annual show (spun off from BBC TV’s Countryfile) held over four days at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, in August and attended by over 120,000 people. This year the CA persuaded the organisers to allow a croquet lawn to be set up in the centre of the Show on which visitors could play under the tutelage of experienced CA players.

Firstly Tony Newport and Pat Edgington from the Eynsham club had to make a lawn out of the parkland.

Then 50 players from neighbouring clubs in the South and South West Federations volunteered to man the lawn over nine hours on each of the four days.

The result was hundreds of visitors got 15 minute slots to play croquet and thoroughly enjoyed it. Tens of thousands of visitors watched as they walked past the lawn and many stopped to chat to the CA volunteers in white to learn what croquet was about and pick up some leaflets. Many were local but some came from as far afield as Ireland, Spain, Australia and Canada. The players were of all ages and we even got BBC Countryfile presenter, Anita Rani “to give croquet a go”. Afterwards she tweeted “Today I play croquet! I’m a bloomin’ natural”.

Over 80 people were sufficiently interested to leave their email and post code details for Dave Gunn, our Development Officer, to steer them towards clubs near their homes and a further 20 had serious chats with members of clubs local to the Show. How many will end up playing croquet we don’t know but it was clear that the CA and modern croquet raised its public profile and made an impact on visitors to the Show. Many thanks must go to the 50 volunteers who manned the lawn with great enthusiasm, to Tony and Pat for setting up the lawn, to the Eynsham club for providing the equipment, to Chris Roberts, Klim Seabright and Frances Colman for recruiting the volunteers and to Liz Larsson and Dan Atiyah of the CA office for managing the complexities of the admin.

 

On Wednesday 2^nd August, Chester Centurions beat Bowdon Sinners at Chester in the North West level play golf competition. The team of Trevor Farrell (captain), Jayne Taylor and Pauline Walters won 11-7.

On the same day the Chester Chariots level play team of Pat Clare (captain), Alan Clare and Janet Jackson played away at Southport. The welcome was warm but the weather was atrocious. The rain was very heavy, the wind was gusty and the sun shone occasionally just to confuse the lawns. The final result depended on the last game which Chester lost, making the final score 10-8 to Southport.

Chester are hosting the All-England open golf croquet competition on Saturday 5^th and Sunday 6^th August. There are 5 Chester players amongst a field of 16, so please come along and support them. There are also two or three ladies who have worn an England shirt, so their games will be worth watching too.

All 4 lawns will be in use, so our monthly Sunday social event is moving to the following Sunday, 13^th August.

The two national competitions that Chester croquet club are competing in resulted in mixed fortunes this week.  Chester is representing the NW Region in the national Secretary’s Shield knock-out tournament for 2017.  Having beaten a team from Oxford University in the first round, by 4-3, they went forward to the quarter final, in which they played against St Albans, Hertford at Nottingham last Sunday.
The Chester team of David Boyd (captain), John Dawson, Robin Tasker and Brian Walton had secured an impressive 3-0 lead by lunchtime, by winning the doubles and the two singles games.  St Albans then took the first game in the afternoon, giving them some hope of a recovery but this was soon foiled when Brian Walton won his game giving Chester the vital fourth point.  Each team won one each of the remaining two games to give a final score line of Chester 5 St Albans 2. Chester now play Sheffield in the semi-final.

In the Longman Cup Chester narrowly lost to Bowdon by 4-3. The team was John Dawson (captain), Paul Watson, Robin Tasker and David Boyd.

The Chester/Pendle and Craven mid-week croquet match was held at Chester on Wednesday July 26^th.  The weather forecast for the day was abysmal, and started with heavy rain, but due to delays on the M62 two Pendle players arrived mid-morning by which time the rain had stopped.
Initially the lawns were a bit wet, but by the afternoon the weather cleared and it was sunny and hot and the lawns dried out nicely.  Chester were also hot as the team of Alan Clare (captain), Helen Brophy, Paul Taylor and David Guyton won the match 6-1.

The quarter final match between Chester and St Albans in the Secretary’s Shield tournament was played at Nottingham CC on Sunday 23^rd July

The team line-ups were:
St. Albans: Jon Palin (hcp 2), Chris Frost (hcp 4.5), Roger Bowman (hcp 14), Geoff Morrison (hcp 18)
Chester: John Dawson (hcp 4), David Boyd (hcp 7), Robin Tasker (hcp 8), Brian Walton (hcp 18)

The first result of the morning session was from the doubles game, when John Dawson and David Boyd pegged out for Chester. The two singles games also finished before time, with Robin Tasker and Brian Walton gaining wins for Chester and giving them a 3 / 0 lead by lunchtime.

In the afternoon three of the four singles games also finished with peg-outs, the first of these being a win for St Albans, in the Jon Palin vs John Dawson encounter giving St Albans the encouragement of a possible come-back. However, the next result in cut this short, when Brian Walton pegged out against Geoff Morrison to give Chester that vital forth point.

The only game to go to time, during the whole day, was that between Chris Frost and David Boyd, which was a nip and tuck struggle and could have gone either way finishing just short of a peg-out at 23 / 21 for Chester.

Score Sheet summary:
John Dawson and David Boyd beat Jon Palin and Chris Frost 26 / 8 Chester
Robin Tasker beat Geoff. Morrison 26 / 18 Chester
Brian Walton beat Roger Bowman 26 / 7 Chester
Jon Palin beat John Dawson 26 / 7 St. Albans
David Boyd beat Chris Frost 23 / 21 Chester
Roger Bowman beat Robin Tasker 26 / 13 St. Albans
Brian Walton beat Geoff. Morrison 26 / 12 Chester

FINAL SCORE: Win for Chester 5 – 2

Only one match was fought by Chester croquet club this week, away at Culcheth. The team for Chester Centurions level play was David Crawford (captain), Chris Slater and Sally Slater. They won 12-6.

There was a national Love Parks Week from 14 to 23 July to celebrate these valuable open spaces and recreation areas. As its contribution to the event, Cheshire West and Chester Council sent out members of its Green Space team to local parks with special heart-shaped notice boards for park users to write their own personal message “I love my park because … ”

The Green Space team happened to visit Westminster Park on the afternoon of Monday, 17 July, when the weekly association croquet session was in full swing. Mustering all their literary skills, the players gladly obliged and displayed their completed heart-shaped notice boards which were duly photographed and published on the Council website.

As all our members deserve their five minutes of fame the photograph is reproduced below.

Chester had another busy week’s play in four away matches.

On Tuesday, 11 July, ten players went to Craig-y-Don at Llandudno for the annual friendly fixture between the two sides. There were many close games during the day but in the end Chester went down in what proved to be a generally tight contest. The club is now looking foward to staging a return match at home in September.

On the following day, Wednesday, 12 July, the Chester Centurions team travelled to Earby to face Pendle Tykes in the North West Level Play Golf Croquet league. The team of David Crawford (captain), Chris Slater and Trevor Farrell enjoyed a good day’s play beating the opposing Pendle team 12 – 6.

At the weekend, another team of Jerry Guest, David Boyd and John Dawson tried hard but lost all their games in the North West Advanced B Level league in an away match against Fylde on Saturday, 15 July.

On the following day, Sunday, 16 July, Chris Thomas (captain), Jayne Taylor, Maureen Ivens and Janet Jackson won their North West golf handicap match 10 – 8 at Bury, enjoying a good humoured match in the summer sunshine.

 

Chester Croquet Club was represented by two of their members, Trevor Farrell and David Boyd, in the Northern area B Level Golf Croquet tournament played at Bury CC on Saturday 8th July.

Sixteen players from both sides of the Pennines were divided into two blocks of eight to compete in the group stage for a place in the final so Bury’s three new lawns at Whitehead park were kept in continuous use all day, with each player having to complete seven games. After eight hours of play the group stage results were showing that it had been a very closely fought competition with many games going to the golden hoop, and that both the Chester players had qualified for the semi-finals.

After another four very closely fought matches David Boyd had a golden hoop win over Roger I’Anson of N. Yorkshire in the final to win the trophy and Trevor Farrell beat Phil Nuttall of Bury to take third place.

David Boyd’s win qualifies him for an All England final to be played at Southport later in the year.

David Boyd receiving the trophy from the event manager, David Barret and second place Roger I’Anson