Author: Joe King

The Founder’s Cup, our AC level advanced play competition, was held this weekend, earlier on in the season to avoid some of the more congested tournament periods later in the year. Six players contested the knock-out format over three rounds.

Andrew Petit was drawn against Paul Wolff in the first round, as was Deirdre Cochrane against Andy Robertson. Andy Evason and Joe King had seeded byes in round one due to their lower handicaps.

Andrew, fresh from his handicap reduction won the opening and set off on his first break which he took round to 4-back (hoop 10). Paul missed the lift shot and Andrew played another good break this time stopping at 2-back (hoop 8), after his ball rolled back into a very tiny rabbit run in the jaws. Paul got in but sadly was hampered by the peg en route to 2-back (hoop 8 again). Andrew soon pegged out 26-9 and advanced to the semi-finals.

In her game, Deirdre took control of much of the early play and built up a fine lead. Andy had a number of narrow misses and couldn’t get going. But with an hour to go, Andy found more rhythm and as time became a factor had a break that would have got him back on to level terms. Unfortunately his approach to 2-back (hoop 8) wasn’t quite good enough and he failed the hoop. Deirdre kept her nerve as time expired to win 24-15.

Andrew faced Andy Evason (also fresh from his handicap reduction) in the first semi-final in a match-up of regular sparring partners over the winter. Both set off with good breaks and soon there were three clips on 4-back (hoop 10). Andy was the first to get a ball to the peg with Andrew on Rover and Rover (hoop 12). Both players had had opportunities to press on to the finish when Andrew left Andy a 13-yard shot which if he hit would likely be decisive. As it was Andy missed by a whisker and Andrew managed to run Rover and peg out 26-21.

In the second semi-final Deirdre played Joe. She took command of the opening and quickly advanced to a seven-hoop lead before Joe had taken croquet. She failed hoop 4, and Joe picked up a break going to 4-back (hoop 10) with a new standard leave. Deirdre then hit the lift but didn’t manage to advance her clips. Joe got in again and tried to set up a triple peel attempt, but was stymied by the peg. So he had to be content with a break to the peg with a vertical spread leave, with Deirdre’s balls in the jaws of Penult and Rover. Deirdre missed the lift this time and Joe finished 26-7.

The final started with Andrew playing the wrong ball on turn five. Joe made hoop 1 from the mistake but then under-approached hoop 2 letting Andrew back in. Shortly afterwards Joe had another opportunity, approaching hoop 1 with a stop-shot approach; but underhit it, leaving a long hoop which he missed, allowing Andrew to get a break going. It looked as though Andrew was in good control until a slightly awkward backward take off at hoop 4 left an angled hoop Andrew failed. 

Joe then took his hoop 1 ball round to 4-back with an old standard leave, Andrew missed the lift which followed, Joe got going with his hoop 2 ball taking it round on a three-ball break until he could get the fourth ball into play after 2-back, Andrew faced a cross-peg leave and elected to shoot down the lawn, glancing off the peg and missing his ball by a whisker. Joe finished 26-4.

The weather was cold in the wind but spared us the prolonged rain suggested by the forecast.

A field of 6 competed in the CA May Short Croquet Tournament held at Blewbury. Tony Mayer from Swindon joined Carol, Paul, Peter, Steve and myself for the all-play-all event. The weather was perfect with clear skies and almost no wind. The lawns were playing well and we completed 5 rounds of 75 minute games finishing at about 6:30.

I ran out the eventual winner with 4 wins out of 5, tied with Carol who also had 4 wins. The first tie breaker was who-beat-who, and in a very close game with Carol earlier in the day I had overtaken Carol by 1 hoop in my final turn of the game. So I just managed to prevail on this occasion.

Paul then presented one of the new engraved ‘trophy’ glasses the Club has procured for our CA tournaments this season.

Philippa and Elizabeth provided an excellent lunch which rounded off a lovely occasion. Many thanks to them both.

The final scoresheet was:

Joe King, Manager

We are heading towards the end of the regular summer season with the finals of the Prebendal Manor Cup being played this Saturday (25th). As we have done in the last few years, we will, be starting the Autumn maintenance immediately thereafter, whilst the turf is warm enough for the grass to thrive through the various treatments.

We have experienced excellent playing conditions on the lawns this year, and our lawns have become widely known in croquet circles as some of the best around. This is the result of careful ‘greens keeping’ by Chris Bateman, tireless mowing and hole filling by John Garnett, Mick Moore and Duncan Sinclair, and the regular annual maintenance programmes. So we want to maintain this quality and our Autumn programme is again designed to do exactly that.

Maintenance

The scope of the Autumn maintenance is slightly broader this year. There will be moss and fertiliser treatments applied alongside the chafer grub spray to keep the lawn in good condition. As in previous years we will be carrying out a thorough scarification to tease out some of the remaining thatch. We anticipate that the lawns will be closed for around 2 weeks, in order for them to recover after the processes have been applied. This will take us into the first half of October.

Levelling

We are all aware that some hills and troughs have begun to develop in certain (and sometimes critical) areas. We want to start to address those and so a new feature is that plan to apply some top dressing selectively. This will begin to address some of the worst troughs identified by the recent lawns survey and in time will even things out. There will be a fuller report on the survey presented at the AGM in October. As this will likely require some time for the treated area to grow through/assimilate the top dressing, we will likely focus on one lawn so that the other can reopen first.

I’ll update the website with information as to the progress and the likely reopening dates for the lawn(s) for play.

Equipment

During the lawns closure the hoops are going to be sand-blasted and resprayed to remove the rust and to return them to a pristine condition.

If you want any more information please contact me.

Joe King

Some of you will have noticed some changes to the club calendar, which are designed to make it more reliable and secure. Quite a number of you have already navigated your way with the new calendars in the days since the changes went live. Things have seemingly been working smoothly and I’m not aware of any operational issues. But if you encounter an issue then I’d be very pleased to hear about it.

The changes are:

• Club events which book the lawns are now all in ‘full green’, and are set up by the club committee, with sign-ups enabling members to register for them. Club events are club sessions and home matches. We have tried to choose colours which work well for normal sighted and CVD users.
• Personal bookings are introduced in two new calendars (one for each lawn) and now in a grey-green. All members can make personal bookings. The slightly different colours also means you can spot personal bookings easily.
• Maintenance is unchanged and White lining should still be booked and entered at the time it is going to be done.
• Other events is now committee meetings, away matches and other activities – and which do not require a lawn allocation.

In terms of why we’ve made these changes. They will:

• Stop email addresses of members being exposed to public users in the sign-ups for events
• Prevent club sessions being inadvertently edited by members trying to sign-up to a session
• Still enable team captains from other clubs to see match fixtures on our calendar

The calendar has two limitations which I would draw to your attention:

• We cannot stop overlapping events as the system is quite clever enough for that. So we can end up with a personal booking accidently overlapping a maintenance session or club event.
• If you need to make an a full day booking there is an option to do that. However, since these aren’t very obvious (they’re posted right at the top of the day they apply to) there have been some overbookings made on top of all day bookings. I would therefore suggest avoiding using the all-day bookings option, but rather make a booking from 9-18 or 9-21 or whatever is required as that will be clearer that the lawns are not available.

I hope everything continues to work smoothly for you.