Chester Croquet Club held its annual end of season dinner and presentation evening at Chez Jules on Tuesday, 19 November, to celebrate successes of the season. About fifty members defied the early winter snow and turned out on a chilly evening to attend the event.
For the second year in succession Chester achieved a series of wins against clubs across the country to reach the final of the national Murphy Inter-Club competition for golf croquet but lost to Sussex County in the final match at Wrest Park. At a regional level, Chester came first in the NW Federation Advanced B-Level association croquet league and second in the Level Play golf croquet league. In the more local North Wales and Cheshire competition for the Snowdonia Cup, Chester’s short lawn and golf handicap teams emerged as overall winner. At the annual Festival of Croquet at Southport attended by all clubs in the north west, Chester fielded three teams, AC handicap, GC handicap and GC level play, and succeeded in coming second in the GC handicap event.
As always, the club held a wide variety of internal club competitions during the year for all levels of association croquet and golf croquet. The club’s chair, Tom Grievson, commended all those who had taken part and presented trophies to the winning players.
Among individual successes during the year, Sarah Clements won the Pendle B Level Golf Croquet Tournament at Pendle on Saturday, 11 May, and qualified for a Croquet England Golf Croquet Silver Merit Award. Then later in the season she was runner-up in the All England Golf Croquet A level competition for the Maggie Cowman trophy hosted by Chester over the weekend of 3-4 August.
Edward Baskerville and Rick Davies achieved third and fourth place in the Chester B Level Golf Croquet Tournament held for the first time on Saturday, 1 June.
Roger Brooks won the Bowdon Short Croquet Trophy at the Bowdon short lawn open competition over Wednesday and Thursday, 24-25 July.
Richard Smith won the Claret Jug for the second year running at Shrewsbury over two days in September severely disrupted by rain in an advanced association croquet competition for the eight highest ranked players from the club. Also in September he won the Plate event in the Welsh Croquet Championships.
The dinner provided another enjoyable opportunity to recognise all these achievements during another successful year. A full list of results can be found in the Members only area.
Meanwhile, back at the lawns …
