Category: News

There are new web pages – described in a recent email telling people about mailing lists and about mailing lists and aliases. These two links require you to be logged in as they are within the members’ area.

Another new page has been introduced to show the status of internal competitions. This lists those going on this year and will, from next year, show those from previous years. This means that the news items for the Icknield Cup, the GC Championship and the AC All England Handicap which this year was renamed to the Berkshire Handicap are now all accessible from that page. I hope that this structure will be found more convenient. Our other internal competitions will appear there shortly. This page is available under “Members/Competitions” and will shortly require login to access it.

We have revised the Covid-19 restrictions governing croquet at Blewbury following last week’s revised guidance from the Government and from the Croquet Association. You can read them here on this web site.

• Controlled roll-up GC sessions are now available on Tuesday and Friday afternoons from 1.30-3.30.  You will still have to register your intent on the booking calendar, both to allow required logging/tracing, and to ensure that no more than 10 people turn up for any such session.  With a max. of 4 players allowed on each court, and potentially 10 people on the premises, priority for play should always be given to anyone “sitting out” during the previous game.

• We also now allow double-banked singles play, both during those roll-up sessions and at other times.  Again, all names must be shown on a booking, and – outside the roll-up sessions – a 2^nd pair may only use the court with the permission of the first pair booking it.

To avoid crowding, the number of people simultaneously allowed on club premises remains limited to 10.  Double-banked doubles is still not allowed.  Nor is there any change in the use of catering or waste facilities in the clubhouse – the kitchen area is decommissioned so we don’t get relays of members trying to use kettles or the fridge in that small space, and you must take home all the waste paper and food or drink containers that you brought with you or generated while at the club – please just remember to bring your own takeaway waste bag with you every time you come, and take it away when you go.

Holder: Peter Allan

Entries for the 2020 competition are now open and anyone wishing to play should contact Joe King to register their interest. The games will be played as 18pt handicap games in the initial block stage, with the final rounds being contested on September 12th (provisionally).

The block stages will be a minimum of 4 games to be played between now and September 6th.

A Blewbury team played Phyllis Court today in a match planned for this new level play league. Blewbury achieved magnificent 8:0 victory. Congratulations to John Garnett, David Grinstead, David Seed and Mick Moore.

We all know that the rules, regulations and guidance keep changing, yet the club is keeping up as best we can. Our latest set of guidelines, which we must treat as binding, are here on this web site. They are intended to be self-contained and consistent with current Government and Croquet Association advice.

Please take the time to read through them.

The one significant change from previous advice is that Club members may now invite guests to play, provided always that the rules about guests are followed. These are:

• guests may only play at off-peak times, outside the peak 1:30-5:30 periods on Mondays through Fridays;
• you must include your guests’ names in your court booking;
• you must make sure your guests know the rules too, and follow them;
• you must pay the guest fee of £5 per guest per session to the club, by bank transfer if you possibly can, and tell the Treasurer, preferably by email, what your payment is for.

On Wednesday 17 June, we held our one-day GC B-level tournament, level play for those with handicaps of 3 and higher. The CA’s tournament guidance had been published a few days earlier; we thought we might have been the first club to go with it – as it turned out, we were the second. Social distancing was the order of the day, and we kept entries down to just six players, though at least twice that number had originally signed up to play.

With staggered start times and no double-banking on either court, the games were all played at a good rate, with just two players waiting to go on as soon as one court was vacated. Each player had been given their own labelled chair well distanced from its neighbours, to use as their base station; and either luckily or by Steve Fisher’s good management, the final game was not only the deciding match of the tournament, pitting Bridget Goodman of Ealing against Caversham’s Peter Adams, but it was a close struggle that went to hoop 13 before Peter finally prevailed 7-6 and took the prize just before the late afternoon rain began.

We expect our next tournament to be the GC C-level equivalent, for handicaps 7+, on Saturday 4 July, and the playing format to be very similar.

Following the Government’s relaxations of lockdown rules from June 1st, and advice received from the Croquet Association, the Committee have agreed that, with immediate effect:

• All members may now book the courts for doubles as well as singles matches. Double-banked games (whether singles or doubles) are still not allowed. All players involved in any game must be named on the booking system, to facilitate contact tracing if necessary.
• Members may now make (or be included in) a maximum of 2 bookings ahead (eg to make one booking, and to be named in one other booking made by another member). Additionally, competition organisers may book further slots for members, as necessary for them to compete in any event/tournament.
• Slots of 2.5 hours may now be booked outside our peak times (Mon-Fri, 1.30-5.30). Bookings within (or overlapping) those hours remain limited to 90 minutes.
• 1 coach or spectator is allowed per court with any booking (ie a total of 5 people may be on club premises for any booked slot). Such coaches/spectators must also be named on the relevant booking, for contact-tracing purposes.

Please inform the Secretary at earliest opportunity if you or any other member you’re aware of starts to exhibit Covid-19 symptoms. No-one with such symptoms should visit the Club.

In making these changes, all other rules/restrictions & cleaning standards remain as previously published. In particular, the Committee reiterate that members should:

• be careful in maintaining the social distancing rule at all times, but to be especially careful during doubles play. 2m distance approximates to 2 mallet lengths held with arms outstretched.
• bring your own chairs, if any are required. The white plastic chairs are not to be used, and use of the wooden bench is to be avoided as much as possible.

The Committee will continue to monitor adherence of these rules, and may retract these relaxations if they are abused.

We have launched the new AC ladder yesterday, which is managed fully online. Members can now book games, record results and view the latest ladder status from smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Details of the ladder are to be found on the Internal Competitions page on the website.

There will be an overall winner towards the end of the season, and recognition for the player winning most games in each three week period. So please take a look and have a go!

Any questions, please drop me a line.

Our lawns are now open for pre-booked singles play (only).

While it’s vitally important that we all stay alert to the continuing virus threat, those members who wish to play may do so; recognising that it’s your own responsibility to keep yourself and others safe: in particular, we ask all members to observe the cleaning and social distancing conditions we have published . These are based on guidance from the Croquet Association and are in compliance with current regulations as published by HM Government. Copies are also posted in the clubhouse.

Up to 4 members can be present on the club grounds at any point in time, playing games of singles, with 1 game per lawn. All games must be booked through the online booking system, with each slot being limited to 90 minutes to ensure lawn availability to as many as want to play.

As equipment-sharing is not allowed, we will also be operating a loan scheme of club mallets to those members without one. Please contact me for more details of that, or for any other queries about our re-opening.

David Long, Club Secretary (07484 360169)

Introduction

Blewbury Croquet Club set up a group to look at internal communications. With the sudden increase of interest in Video Conferencing during the coronavirus pandemic it seemed useful for the group to see what video conferencing solutions are available and affordable. Three very important factors are video quality, audio quality and pricing all of which could change at any time so this report was only correct on the day it was published. With the recent increased use of these tools the press have picked up on some security concerns. We are not aware of major security problems with any of these tools. In all cases where costs are mentioned these are per month. All the browser based tools worked well on Chrome, and on the latest version of Edge (v79 and later – which has not been generally released in the UK yet but is available for download) and most worked on Firefox.

Solutions considered

The four of us tested: BlueJeans, Google Duo, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Skype, Webex, WhatsApp and Zoom. We will comment on each one and then make recommendations at the end. We did not try MS Teams because we did not find a way to install it and it has a reputation to be hard to install.

Tools with many features

Five tools had many features and seemed to be well suited for desktop devices as well as phones and tablets and all had a rather similar look and feel. They all offered the ability to view everybody side by side or to just show the speaker large and will others as small images. An interesting feature that some products have is the support of breakout rooms. The idea is that all, or some, participants can spend part of the meeting in small groups. These breakout sessions are normally to allow people to talk within a smaller subgroup or to work on problems in parallel and then someone reports back to the main meeting when everybody has returned. One of us has also used them successfully in conjunction with an online bridge program.

Blue Jeans

We found relatively poor video and the audio was so bad that natural conversations were impossible. There is no free version so it appears to be of no interest today. The documentation mentions breakout rooms.

Google Hangouts

This tool might be better in the next classification of simple tools. It supports up to 10 users with good audio and visual quality. It offers screen sharing but it is not convenient to use. It has no benefits over Webex. It does not support breakout rooms.

GoToMeeting

The free version is severely restricted to allowing meetings for up to 40minutes and up to 4 people. The entry level cost of £10 a month is a little less than Zoom and for £13 you can record and generate transcripts which might be useful for secretaries. The audio and video quality are comparable to Zoom. Breakout rooms are supported but in a companion product GoToTraining which is much more expensive.

Webex

The major benefit of Webex is that it is free for up to 100 people for meetings of unlimited duration. The audio, video and screen sharing facilities are almost as good as Zoom. The documentation suggests that it may support breakout rooms but we were unable to discover how to do it in the free product.

Zoom

When tested this did have the best audio and video quality. The only problem is that it is not free unless you are either having a 1:1 meeting or can fit your meeting into a forty minute time slot. For longer meetings or with more people it costs you £12 and for £16 you can generate transcripts of a meeting. This supports breakout rooms – even in the free version.

Simple Tools

Google Duo

Used from a web browser you can, today, only call one person. From a mobile app it works well and groups can be defined of up to twelve people allowing you to call everyone in that group. It claims to offer screen sharing but we did not test it. Audio and visual quality were both good.

Skype

When we tested Skype, we had considerable difficulty in getting all four of the participants connected to the meeting. One person needs to invite others to join the meeting, which is not as convenient as having each participant clicking on a link to join the meeting. We also experienced poor audio and video quality.

WhatsApp

This is limited to four people but if you are already a WhatsApp user it is very easy to use and again has good visual quality. It is however very susceptible to background noise and does not allow you to use web.whatsapp.com to link to a desktop.

Conclusions

• If someone in the group you wish to communicate with has a Zoom or GoToMeeting licence then as these tools both work well and probably provide a better experience than Webex then use that tool.
• If you need breakout rooms then the only affordable possibility appears to be Zoom.
• If your meetings are 1-1 or can be kept down to 40 minutes then use the free Zoom license.
• For a good free solution for up to 100 people with good audio and video choose Webex.
• For a small group of up to 12 and not confined to the desktop Google Duo works well.
• If you are in a small WhatsApp group and again not confined to the desktop then it is easy to make a video call but background noise can be a problem.

Peter Allan, Steve Fisher, Joe King, David Vincent – 13 Apr 2020