The season is proving to be a busy one, with very variable weather !
On the Thursday, 16 May, the Chester Centurions, a three player team, travelled to LLanfairfechan to play a Golf Croquet Level Play league match. The day started bright and sunny with a sea breeze, but by lunchtime the Welsh mountains were shrouded in mist and the rain came down bringing a wet afternoon. The match was a close one, with Llanfairfechan 5-4 at lunchtime, but Chester pulled back to 9-8 in the rain. The last game was won by the closest of margins, closing the match at a draw 9-9. A fitting score for two well balanced teams.
The annual club tournament for the Fletton Trophy took place on Sunday, 19 May, at Chester under blue skied and wonderful sunshine. This is an advanced association croquet competition and Richard Smith, David Boyd, David Guyton, Robin Tasker, Mark Lloyd and Roger Brooks played each other in five rounds of games, each game limited to 70 minutes. That was a lot of croquet under a hot sun ! The games were hard fought, with a high standard of play, and the final round decider between the two highest seed players saw Richard victorious over Roger at 14 points to 8.
In stark contrast, on Wednesday, 22 May, an all ladies team of Jayne Taylor, Val Sanders and Sarah Clements ventured northwards in heavy rain and very heavy traffic to play a short lawn assciation croquet league match against Westmorland. The setting of Levens Hall was beautiful, and the host team was very welcoming, but the continuous rain, low temperature and soggy lawns proved physically testing. The final result was very close with Westmorland winning 5 games and Chester 4, Sarah excelling in her first ever AC match by winning all her 3 games.
Then on Sunday, 26 May, an association croquet handicap team of Sally Slater (captain), David Boyd, David Guyton and Andy Wilson-Chalon played Bury Peelers at their Whitehead Park venue in Bury. Unsurprisingly there had been a lot of rain, making the lawns heavy and wet and difficult to play on at the start. The rain came in patches, interspersed with periods of warm sunshine and the lawns got faster during the day. Chester won the doubles but lost both singles in the morning giving a score of 2-1 to Bury at lunchtime. In the afternoon the singles matches were very closely fought and each side won two games, giving Bury a final score of 4-3. The day finished in a thunderstorm and torrential rain!
A week that demonstrated just how much nicer it is to play croquet when the weather is good !