On a beautiful final day of April, four of us joined battle in the opening heat of the
All-England Handicap championships: Joe, Andy Evason, Deirdre, and Andrew Petit.
The joy of handicap play is that anyone might win! And so in the first round Andy E beat Joe 14-1 and in the 2nd round Andrew beat Joe 14-0 ! Meanwhile Andy went on to beat Deirdre and Andrew in the 2nd and 3rd rounds, and so now progresses to the next stage (an area final in August). Who knows where this might lead !

Meanwhile, Joe executed a just revenge (or reward?) on Andy and Andrew. Having judged that they had both become bandits over the winter, he had been threatening to reduce their handicaps for the last couple of months. Their decisive victories over him in this contest were the final straw! Andy’s AC handicap has been reduced from 7 to 4.5 and Andrew’s from 9 to 7. Neither know whether to be shocked, delighted, or just resigned !

Andrew Petit

Here’s Andrew Petit’s report on this week’s Longman Cup triumph…

On Wednesday, April 22nd, we had our first victory in the AC Inter-Club handicap tournament since 2017.

On a beautiful Spring day we hosted the first-round match — and the first CqE AC match of the season —against Bristol, who have often been our nemesis in the past.

We got off to a flying start with Andy Evason and Andrew Petit gaining two comfortable victories in their morning singles matches.

 Meanwhile, Deirdre Cochrane and Nigel Cox were battling it out in their doubles match against Bristol’s captain Margot Soakell and Simon Rye. Having got off to a very shaky start, Deirdre and Nigel valiantly fought back to 17-all at full time. Both teams had good opportunities to win the golden hoop, but it was Bristol that finally made it on the third attempt.

So the lunchtime score was 2-1, with four singles matches to be played in the afternoon.

Blewbury managed to win two of these through Evason and Petit, which was enough to bring about a 4-3 victory.

In the next round, we play Kington Langley. They beat us last year — but this time, we will have the home advantage.

We have written into the diary April 30^th – next Thursday – as the date for our qualifier heat to the All-England handicap competition.

The All-England handicap is open to all AC players, playing handicap games, and starts at club level, then moves on to area finals played in your region and then the national final.

We have hosted the finals a year or so ago and will do so again in 2028.

If you would like to take part in the qualifier then please let Joe King know. It will start at 9:30 or 10:00am and run into the afternoon, depending on how many entrants we have. We need a minimum of 4, and have 3 signed up already. So if you’d like to play please let Joe know over the weekend. Depending on numbers we may need to postpone.  

The format for the regional and national finals is 26pt timed games, played full bisque to a base of 6. Depending on number we’ll use a format ensuring players have multiple games during the day.

Our One-day Open GC tournament regularly attracts a quality field of low-handicap players; people who are drawn by the one-day format and the quality of our courts. This year was no exception; neither the courts nor the weather were disappointing.

We welcomed young Josef Rakosnik, a Czech in the UK for the next week’s European Club League competition. He had arrived in the UK only the day before and was playing his first croquet of 2026.

The all-play-all format involved each player having seven games, so there was no hanging around.  After the first few games the field split into a top half, who were winning most of their games and a bottom half, who were struggling against the power play and accuracy of the lower handicappers, notably Ian Burridge (Nottingham) and Guy Scurfield (Dulwich), both playing off -1. 

Going into the seventh and final round, there were three on five wins — Burridge, Scurfield and Rakosnik. But the Czech was too far behind on net hoops, and Burridge and Scurfield were drawn to play each other.  

In this deciding game. Burridge had the edge for the first few hoops, but Scurfield came back strongly to win successive hoops at the end for a 7-5 victory.  Burridge thus ended up a creditable second.  Nick Saxton (Cheltenham) finished with a win to edge past Rakosnik on hoop difference for third place

Scurfield had won the tournament in 2024, but last year choose to play in Mauritius rather than Blewbury.  He describes his exploits there and in other equally exotic countries in his article in the current (April) edition of the Croquet Gazette.

Our picture shows Blewbury’s Open field, with champ Guy Scurfield third from left.

On Saturday 11th April, three of our AC players, Joe King, Andy Evason, and myself, gathered at Blewbury to do battle for the 2025 Prebendal Trophy. Yes, I know it is now 2026, but we were not able to complete the competition last year due to the extensive works we had done on the lawns last autumn.

In the morning, Joe and I contested the semi-final as an 18-point game. The early morning rain had stopped before we got to the lawns and the wind referred to in the title had not yet got up. Joe won the toss and put me in first. I hoped that this would work to my advantage since I left no short shot for Joe’s second ball. However, Joe turned down the ‘short’ shot at the ball in corner 2 (a mere 13 yards away), and instead shot at my ball just south of the peg (I estimate this was 15 yards away) and hit it. This was not part of my game plan! From a somewhat tricky starting position, Joe crafted a break with what I can only describe as exemplary play. This was precision croquet of the highest order. It was not inconceivable that I had already played my last stroke (so much for having one bisque) since Joe has talked in the past about doing a quadruple peel (having run hoop 1, his partner ball is already on 3-back) so I decided to just sit back and enjoy Joe’s play. It was lovely to watch. The one glimmer of hope was that Joe did not manage to get his blue ball down to 3-back, so the quad peel was now very unlikely. However, the relentless precision play continued. Until hoop 5. Joe ran the hoop and had a rush on a ball that was only a couple of yards away – and he missed! I think we were both in shock. I now had a chance. The balls were reasonably placed for me to make a break. I had a good pioneer at hoop 1 so I decided to shoot at it gently from about 7 yards and use my bisque if I missed (which I did). My break was nowhere near as pretty as Joe’s. It was a bit too adventurous (the term is not a compliment!), but it was effective and I ran all 12 hoops. I am sure that some of you are thinking “surely you should have stopped at rover so that Joe couldn’t peg you out”. Against a lesser opponent you would be correct, but Joe is quite capable of peeling me through rover and still pegging me out, so there seems little point in doing that. I made a leave with my two balls near to 3-back (my next hoop), with Joe’s blue ball over by the west boundary and his black ball due north of mine. I had not put it far enough away for my liking and Joe decided to shoot at one of my balls. It was the shortest shot available, but if he missed, I would have an easy pickup. I expected Joe to hit in. It was a longish shot, but Joe is good at these. However, the croquet gods were on my side and Joe’s ball sailed through the middle of mine. I now had an easy pickup, I made the last four hoops on a three-ball break, and pegged out for an 18-5 win.

So, on to the final – a 26-point game against Andy. Andy had seven bisques and I know that he normally uses them well, so I was expecting a tough battle. Then the wind got up, so we were both battling against the wind as well. The play proved to be very ‘interactive’. This is a term used by the top players to describe a game in which each player makes a hoop or two, but then breaks down. It makes for a fun game, but it is not what we aspire to do. In fact, Andy was making the hoops (using some bisques) and I was failing hoop 1 each time. My clips sat there for an embarrassingly long time. However, with Andy’s clips both on hoop 5, I hit in, finally ran hoop 1, and made a break of nine hoops. The interactive play continued. At one point, I was casting to line up the shot and I realised that my mallet head was swinging in an ellipse as it went forwards and backward, going nowhere near the ball. Time to walk away and re-stalk. Which I did – three times! The interactive play continued and I got my yellow ball to rover. Andy’s balls were well advanced on penult and hoop 5, but then I hit in with my red ball with three balls around hoop 1. Making hoop 1 was easy, but I had no pioneer at hoop 2, and no pivot or pioneer at hoop 3. I manage to get a good rush on black up to hoop 2. I made the hoop and got a rush over to hoop 3. (All that 2-ball practice was coming in useful.) I made hoop 3, and realised that I actually had a decent chance of going round and even winning as there was a reasonable pioneer at hoop 4. Unfortunately, I blew it with the next stroke. I played a big split to send black to hoop 6 and to get my red ball down to the yellow pioneer at hoop 4 – and I left it woefully short. This was a missable shot, and I did indeed miss it. There was some more interactive play and some excitement when Andy failed rover with his second ball, but it was too late for me and Andy prevailed to win 26-14. There were only the two of us present at the time, so I had to take a selfie of me handing the trophy to Andy. Well done Andy; a worthy winner and perhaps the first of many.

winner Joe King receives his trophy from Tournament Manager, David Long

This year the Roger Cambray Memorial Shield, our annual One-Ball championship, returned to its traditional Easter Monday slot. And the glorious weather made the event a fitting formal start to our summer season.

16 contestants – including our two newest members, Tim Leverton and Chen Woodward – competed in 4 tightly-fought blocks through the morning with the top 8 progressing to the afternoon knock-out. Joe King and Nigel Cox convincingly won their blocks with 3 wins out of 3, but the other two blocks required tie-break rules to determine not only the winner, but also the runner-up: David Vincent and Carol Jamieson progressed as block winners, with Philippa Turner and Andrew Petit just behind them; Deirdre Cochrane and Andy Evason were only narrowly eliminated.

Joe’s traditional Easter spit-roast provided a splendid centrepiece for the lunch that followed, with equally delicious salads and desserts provided by Philippa Turner, Sandy Millikin and Tim Leverton.

The afternoon saw the morning’s top 8 in quarter-final action, while the rest competed for a “plate” event. The four semi-finalists in the main event were Joe, Nigel, and the runner-ups from their two blocks. While David Long went on to beat Andy Robertson in the 3rd-place play-off, Nigel took an early lead against Joe in the Final, using his bisques well. But Joe was on unbeatable form, slowly clawing his way back to draw level, before pulling away to a 13-7 victory. After previous wins in the Founders Cup, Prebendal and KMT, Joe has finally – and deservedly – now got his name on the last of our AC trophies.

It was nearly a clean sweep for the Kings, with Claire reaching the final of the plate event; but there she met Deirdre Cochrane, the reigning champion (and 7-time winner) of this competition: Deirdre might have been knocked out of the main event this year, but she made sure she went away with a consolation prize.

The event acted also as our heat to the National Charity One-Ball competition (to be held at Surbiton on 16th May). Our donations raised an impressive £177.50 for Save The Children, Croquet England’s chosen charity for this season.

No not the rapper, or by the brilliant play of one of our several Dave’s (or David’s). This was Storm Dave that decided to add an extra challenge to our AC Hi-Lo competition last Saturday (4th April).

The aim of the day was to have a fun, but competitive, day of AC doubles where everyone has a different partner in each round. A high handicap player would be paired with a low handicap player, quite possibly someone they had never played with before. Everyone seemed to have a good time in the morning, despite a little early rain, but then Storm Dave arrived after lunch. Plastic chairs went flying and it was difficult to swing the mallet so that you hit the ball instead of your shins. I reckon I had more bevelled edges in one day (not a fault unless you have a hampered stroke) than in the rest of my 10-year playing career.

I had planned to play five rounds, but by 5pm, most players felt they had had enough, so we stopped the formal proceeding at that point. A few hardy souls (Joe, Brian, Carol and I) played one last game, just for the fun of it. And wouldn’t you know it, the sun came out!

The players with the best results over the day were Andrew Petit and Claire King, so each of them wins a bottle of wine.