Author: David Guyton

A sure sign that the new season is not far away …

Photographs taken by our ever hopeful Equipment Officer, Robin Tasker, on Monday, 12 February 2018

We are very sad to report the death of another member, Clive Howard, who died  at The Countess of Chester Hospital on Sunday, 21 January. He had been ill for some time. He and his wife, Margaret, joined the club in 2004 and used to enjoy the weekly club games. Both were well liked by all club members and we were all grateful for his willingness to use his membership of the Chester Golf Club to organise our annual dinners there.

Chester Croquet Club marked the end of another busy and successful season with a supper and trophy presentation at Chez Jules on Monday evening, 20 November. Awards were presented by chair, Sarah Andrew, at the end of the evening.

Trophy winners awarded during the evening were Mark Lloyd (Fletton trophy advanced AC); David Boyd (Mason Cup handicap AC); Sally Slater (Hasting Wang bowl AC short lawn); Mike Falla (Rabbits trophy AC); Chris and Sally Slater (Hermitage golf doubles trophy); Liz Subramanian (Mollie McBride RAT trophy GC); Pat Kelsall (Peter Bingham award GC); Val Sanders (most improved player AC) and Jill Foley (most improved player GC).

Winners of competitions played during the season who received their trophies at the time were Sandy Finchett-Maddock (Christine Long trophy GC); Paul Taylor (Hasting Wang GC singles) and Doreen Leece (Hibiscus trophy AC short lawn).

The club had some good results in NW Federation leagues, winning the midweek handicap AC league and coming second in the golf handicap league and the level play golf croquet league.

Individual succesesses during the season were:

• Sally Slater  winner of the NW Federation Millennium short croquet tournament at Chester on 14 May
• David Boyd  winner and Trevor Farrell  third in the Northern Area B Level golf croquet tournament at Bury on 9 July
• Garry Greenwood  winner and David Boyd (wearing his Tattenhall colours)  runner-up in the National Level Play Golf Croquet Tournament at Chester on 6 August, and Jayne Taylor winner of the Telfords Plate
• John Dawson  runner-up in the Advanced B Level tournament at Bowdon on 18 September
• David Boyd runner-up in the final of the All England B Level golf croquet tournament at Southport on 7-8 October

Chester MP, Chris Matheson, accompanied by local councillor, Richard Beacham, made a visit to Chester Croquet Club on Wednesday, 4 October, during one of their club days and tried his hand at croquet. The main purpose of the visit was to introduce him to the game and a flourishing club based in a public park in his constituency and to up-date him on some of the current issues of concern to the club but it had the additional benefit of briefing him about the Croquet Association’s national role in the context of his membership of the House of Commons Select Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. On a sunny but blustery autumnal day he was impressed by the numbers and obvious enjoyment of the members playing and gained an understanding of the strong league structure for all levels of play across the North West. He quickly grasped the competitive dimensions of the sport as well as its social, outdoor exercise and health benefits for players. Local issues are to be followed up with council representatives and Mr Matheson offered to meet with national officials of the Croquet Association at the Houses of Parliament to discuss the future needs of croquet across the country.

Chester Croquet Club’s annual Mason Cup association croquet handicap competition is played during the season, where the top scorers from the group stage qualify for the semi-final and final. This year the final, between Brian Walton (hcp 16) and David Boyd (hcp 6), was played on Saturday, 30th September. Brian Walton immediately took the initiative and, making effective use of his 10 bisques (extra shots) , built a commanding lead by reaching peg and four back. Meanwhile David Boyd had managed to score just two hoops, 19 points behind, with a mountain to climb to get back into the game. Eventually he managed to get a break together taking 10 hoops and was then able to peg out Brian’s forward ball. Having 2 remaining bisques Brian ran 2 more hoops before David steadily worked his way round with his second ball, finally pegging out to win by two points. An epic game and a narrow finish!

Congratulations to the mid-week association croquet team who have won the North West Federation league title in 2017. At the start of the week Chester had won 5 out of 5 games with an impressive 24-11 cumulative points difference but with one more game to play against Westmorland. The campaign then ended with a damp squib as Tuesday’s game against Westmorland was called off as the lawns at Levens Hall were waterlogged.

The final result was Chester in first position followed by Westmorland in second position and Bowdon Earls in third position.

Well done to all the team.

Chester Croquet Club held its annual end-of-season Hibiscus Tournament on Saturday, 23 September, for players with relatively high handicaps. Six members competed for the trophy in an all-play-all format with each playing three one-hour games in the morning and two one-hour games in the afternoon assisted by a full complement of bisques. Playing conditions were good and the weather oscillated between grey with hints of drizzle and brief periods of autumnal sunshine.  All the players made good use of their bisques – free shots – and several managed to reach peg before time was called. Overall winner of the competition was Doreen Leece, who ran 68 hoops. In second place was Sarah Andrew with 61 hoops followed by Liz Rowley in third place with 45 hoops.

James Hawkins, a leading AC player and author of Complete Croquet, is to be congratulated on getting croquet on to the Chris Evans Radio 2 show. He initially phoned in to “put Chris right” on the history of croquet at Wimbledon a few weeks ago and was promptly “rewarded” with a live interview with Chris within days. A brave man! And whilst James in the interview may not have revealed anything new to croquet aficionados he did get croquet into the public arena. Not many of us create the opportunity to talk to 9 million people in the UK about croquet and to get on to the Chris Evans IPlayer site for more listeners (along with a photo of AC World Champion, Stephen Mulliner lining up a hoop 1 peel).

Listen in at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p058x6kh

Well done, James

John Dawson

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.