Blewbury won their second major GC trophy in a fortnight yesterday when their C team captured the SCF’s Advantage League title.

Our intrepid quartet (above) of Sarah Donne, David Long, skipper Andy Evason (with the cup) and late replacement Deirdre Cochrane took the title after the match finished in an 8-8 draw.

Unusually the team consisted of four players who are all Blewbury villagers, so it was a triumph for the parish as well as the club.

David was top scorer for Blewbury on the day with three wins, despite feeling under par with flu-type symptoms. “I don’t know how I dragged myself to the game,” he said, “but Andy was out of subs and I didn’t want to let the team down.”

The outcome of the showdown between the North and Central division champions — played in persistent drizzle — was decided in the game between the two No.1s, Andy beating the Oxfordshire club’s Hugh Manson 7-4.

All four sessions were closely fought, with Eynsham hitting back after Blewbury’s strong start.

Andy said: “Many thanks to Jackie Bryant, who came along to referee, and Brian and Carol Jamieson who supported the team and kept the tea flowing.”

The Advantage League silverware followed hard on the heels of Blewbury’s win in the Doubles League last month, also against Eynsham.

League manager Roy Tillcock said: “Congratulations to Blewbury on snatching the win in some unfavourable weather.”

Blewbury will be entitled to enter next year’s GC Federations’ Shield knock-out competition as the SCF representative.

There will be an official presentation of the trophy at the SCF’s annual meeting in Winchester on November 24th.

Here’s the scoresheet from yesterday’s final:

Here’s a happy snap following the conclusion of today’s SCF GC doubles cup final!

Brian and Carol Jamieson, Ruth Raunkiaer and Andy Jones proudly show off the silverware after the Blewbury quartet thrashed a strong Eynsham side 6-1 this afternoon.

Brian and Carol won all four of their matches while Andy and Ruth won one in the morning and another in the afternoon before agreeing with their opponents not to play the final match.

The League may yet rule that it was a concession, so the final score could be recorded as a 7-1 triumph for the winners of the south division over the winners of the north.

Blewbury won’t be too bothered about that, or the fact that the trophy they are showing off is not the correct silverware.

The win comes at the end of Blewbury’s first season in the Doubles League and is a reward for Carol’s hard work in organising the teams and fixtures, including an ‘overseas’ trip to Ryde.

• Thanks to the Eynsham player Liza Furnival for the pic; good sports, these west Oxford folk!

GC Championship

The sun shone brightly on Sunday afternoon as Peter Allan and Andy Evason took to the court to compete for the GC Championship trophy.  Due to the way results went in the previous rounds and player availability there were no semi-final warm up games but straight into the final best of 3 games.  Peter started brightly taking an early lead but Andy, a true competitor, fought back to 6 all and finally prevailed on hoop 13 to win game 1.  Peter started game 2 as brightly as the first, taking an early lead but a game of cat and mouse then ensued with Andy taking control of hoop after hoop. After winning a dog fight to run hoop 10 he was then able to take control of hoop 11 and secure a deserved 7:4 victory to win the GC championship.  Perhaps it was destiny, Andy won the coin toss with a heads call and Peter rued the use of a coin that had landed heads up 6 times in a row.

After a week of variable, wet weather the sun came back out for the Icknield Cup finals day, requiring plenty of sunscreen but luckily no waterproofs.

 This year the new target score advantage rules were used meaning that all matches start 0 0 but more or less than 7 hoops may be needed to win, depending on the handicaps of the two players

Brian Jamieson (4)  faced David Long (5)  in one semi final and David Vincent (5) played Bruce Gibson ( 6 ) in the other. These handicaps meant that Brian and David V both needed 8 hoops to win, whilst their opponents only needed 7.

Both semi finals started with a tight game, David L beating Brian 7 6 whilst Bruce beat David V 7 5. David V came back well in his second game beating Bruce 8 3 to set up a deciding third game but Brian was unable to capitalise on a good start in his second game and David L won the game and the match with a 7 6 score line. David L and Brian joined the spectators to watch David V repeat his second game score line, beating Bruce 8 3 again to win the match two games to one.

After a welcome break for lunch we were ready for the final. As both players have the same handicap these games were essentially level play , with the first to 7 winning. Unsurprisingly this was a close game with David L taking the first game 7 5 and David V the second 7 6.

It was impossible to guess which David would be the victor as once again the match went to the golden hoop. On this occasion it was David Long who emerged the winner of the Icknield Cup with a final score line of 7 5, 6 7, 7 6. Congratulations David L and commiserations David V but thank you for the entertaining games.

Over the summer we have become accustomed to it not raining at all. However, that came to an end on Saturday – possibly earlier, but I was away on holiday. The AC Advanced Super-B tournament took place over the weekend of 29-30 August 2026, and we had quite a lot of rain, to the extent that parts of lawn 2 were noticeably squelchy during Saturday afternoon. Nine players did battle over the two days and everyone said that they had a good time, even those who were less than successful at play. I ran the tournament as a flexible Swiss tournament since that minimises the time that any one player is waiting for their next game. Few games went to time, so that helped to keep things moving. And speaking of things Swiss, Peter Payne had travelled from Switzerland to play in the tournament. If you count Robert Upton travelling from Wales, it was a rather international event.

The lawns were in excellent condition, as one would expect, although as I arrived on Saturday morning, they looked rather like a bilious zebra, with green and black stripes. I have not seen that before!

Several players won many games, but Carl Brown was the only one to emerge undefeated on five out of five wins. He also managed to complete his first triple peel in competitive play, so he will be getting his gold merit award shortly.

As ever, the lunches were excellent and everyone who partook said how splendid the food was. A big ‘thank you’ to everyone who prepared and presented the food.

Postscript

Most of the player left after the presentation of the trophy, but Neil Kingston and Peter Payne were part-way through their final game (which could not affect who won), so Carl and I watched that. The ending proved to be very entertaining. When I started watching, Neil was on 3-back (yellow) and peg (red), with Peter on 4-back and 4-back.

After a bit of interactive play, Neil had a rush on red with yellow to 3-back, which was his next hoop. He made the rush to what seemed to be a good position, but then to the surprise of the spectators (Carl and I) he thought about it for a while and croqueted red to west of hoop 6, getting close to blue and black on the south boundary. Neil engineered a good rush to 4-back and ran the hoop with yellow, only to discover that he had not yet run 3-back! Peter capitalised on the mistake by taking black from 4-back to peg and pegging out Neil’s red ball. Things did not look good for Neil. He managed to make 3-back with yellow, but then Peter made 4-back and penult with blue, he peeled black through rover (he had already scored the hoop point), ran rover with blue gently, and then jawsed blue so that black would have an easy rush to peg so that he could peg out both balls on the next turn. Neil’s yellow was west of hoop 2, a long way from Peter’s balls. Surely he could not hit in. Not only did he hit blue in the jaws of rover, but he managed to get a perfect rush on black to 4-back. He made 4-back, penult, and blue was a good pioneer for rover. Neil made rover and for a final flourish, pegged out one of Peter’s balls, followed by his yellow, for a 26-25 victory. It really isn’t over ’til it’s over.

This year’s August Bank Holiday saw a re-run of last year’s fun-day, with 23 of our members involved in one way or another; whether playing, coaching, catering, or helping to prepare the lawns.

The morning saw those present trying out versions of the game that many hadn’t played before; whether GC players trying out SC, or those trying less conventional games – from Match Play One-Ball (and a reprise of my own three-ball variant) to Two-Shot GC and even Pirates.

The afternoon saw coached sessions for prospective new members, as we threw our doors open to a total of 16 visitors. Thanks to Peter Allan for the 10 who came from Wantage Bridge Club.

The lawns were magnificent, the catering delectable, and the threatened showers never materialised. It was a day the club could be proud of, and which hopefully may lead to some additional recruitment over the next few weeks.

(right) Lainey Summers (aka “Pinkbeard”) en route to a shared Pirates victory

David Vincent was the hero as the Blewbury C team clinched the Southern Federation’s GC Advantage League’s Central Division title on Saturday.

David won all four of his matches as Blewbury pipped High Wycombe Kites 9-7 at Hazlemere and completed the job with victory at the golden hoop in the deciding rubber. The Kites had previously won all of their fixtures.

Our star man said: “Wycombe had brought along some wine to celebrate winning the title and they kindly gave us some to celebrate instead. Unfortunately I had to drive home.”

Skipper Andy Evason and Philippa Turner both had two wins and Sarah Donne also recorded an important victory in the last round of matches.

Andy’s team will now play off against the winners of the North and South divisions for the overall league title.

The seven days marking the turn of the month perhaps typified for me the life of the croquet player and how much depends on our all too unpredictable mental attitude.

On July 28th I was looking forward to playing at Bristol for the first time, envisaging lovely lawns maintained by a well-resourced city club. So it was a bit of a shock arriving to find the two completely brown, patchy and generally very rough-looking lawns we were expected to play on. 

Sure enough, it was a day of playing something more akin to “Crazy Croquet” rather than Short Croquet. It seems I adapted the worst in our team, as I lost all four of my games — which was the main reason why we lost the match.

However, our hosts were delightful and did their best to make up for the dreadful state of their lawns with a cream tea and home-made cake.

The next day I was down at Hamptworth for another SC match. Would their lawns be any better? At first sight, the signs were hopeful; there were actually patches of green on the lawn! However, further inspection and the subsequent match showed that playing on a random patchwork of almost bald lawn and roughly-mown green grass was even more unpredictable than the day before. 

Nevertheless,  it seems I managed to improve my Crazy Croquet skills, winning a respectable two out of four. Blewbury managed to do just enough to draw the match, mainly thanks to Joe King winning all four of his games.

On the Friday I returned with relief to the lovely green, level lawns of Blewbury to play the redoubtable Raghu Iyer of Phyllis Court for an AC C level play match alongside Paul Wolff. Relief soon turned to frustration as, having begun to get the hang of Crazy Croquet, I no longer seemed to be able to play on a proper grass court at all; or maybe it was the change back to a full-size court. 

Eventually my AC skills began to come back to me, but it wasn’t enough to overtake Raghu’s early lead and I lost 17-21. Sadly Paul had a similar experience against Paul Franklin of Phyllis Court and so between us we lost the match.

The next day Blewbury hosted the CqE August Short Croquet tournament. Nineteen players had been entered including some with seriously low handicaps, such as Dave Kibble on four peels, licking their lips at the prospect of playing on our beautiful lawns.

I was somewhat apprehensive after a pretty disastrous week—after all, I had lost seven games out of nine in the previous four days — but maybe it had all been some kind of weird preparation for the Short Croquet tournament, because I played one of my best competitive days in  my four-year croquet career. I won all four of my matches, including beating Andy Evason after he had pegged out my first ball, by taking my second ball all the way round to peg on a three-ball break. I also beat the formidable Dave Kibble. 

Several others had also won four games, but most had lost one or two as well. Only one other, Adam Huby of Watford, had like me a 100 per cent record. Ideally we should have played each other in a grand final, as we had not previously played each other. However, it was getting late after a long hot day and people needed to get home, so it came down to Joe’s tie-breakers, which he had previously set out for all too see. On this basis — by Joe’s formula I had beaten a better-playing opposition — I was declared the winner and received the lovely engraved glass.

A day later we hosted a friendly match against the Watford players who were coming to the end of their summer tour. I joined for the afternoon match and by chance ending up playing a handicap AC match against the one and the same Adam Huby. Needless to say, I lost! 

I offered to give my SC victor’s glass to Adam, but he graciously declined my offer.

The Good Book says that pride comes before a fall. So on the next day with great confidence after my mighty SC victory, I challenged Edmund Shirley to a match on the KMT ladder. I was intending to improve my second from bottom status. Of course I lost! 

I now languish at the very bottom of the ladder. But there’s always tomorrow!