The annual spring one ball competition was well attended and won by Phil! He was rewarded with sweeties from the organiser, Mo.
One Ball
New lawns for a new season
Today we turned our winter lawns by 90°, enlarged them and re-positioned all our hoops. 11 of the club chaps turned out and spent about three hours measuring, unwinding string, winding string, marking, painting, drilling, hammering, swearing and finally … playing!
It started out on Wednesday locating the 16 corners for our new lawns. Each lawn is a rectangle 105 feet x 84 feet. We (more or less) created the required four massive rectangles to within an inch or so. The only minor impediment was a hail storm that briefly turned the lawns white.
On Thursday, in addition to the four large lawns we created two half-lawns, to be used for Short Croquet club play and matches. At times you could barely see the grass for the hoops.
Each hoop has two sets of holes, one for regular club play and the others we keep for ‘best’ to be only used for competitions and matches against other clubs. The hoops are set with a clearance of about one-eight of an inch either side of the ball. Over the winter we have been blessed with somewhat wider hoops, very popular with the membership as they have been easy to run. Championship hoops are often set with one sixty-fourth of an inch clearance, so it could be worse!
Tomorrow morning our ground-keepers are booked to mark the new white lines. We have started them off with some neat corner-painting.
… and here is the motley crew who undertook all this work. Well done chaps, see you in the Autumn when we do it all again.
Today’s work in numbers…
- 16 lawn corners precisely located
- 48 winter hoop holes filled-in (plus four centre-peg holes)
- 96 summer hoop holes drilled (plus another 24 for the half-lawns) and twelve centre peg holes
- 36 hoops hammered in, most of them vertical!
- 11 mugs of tea
- an unquantifiable amount of biscuits
Phil’s Side Hustle?
We’re very lucky as a club to have so many gifted members who are always up for a challenge. Setting hoops is a precision job and one of the tools of the trade is a clamp hoop. This ensures the hoops are of a consistent width; not too tight and not too loose.
Croquet England advertise a splendid clamp hoop on their website. A snip at £185.90!
Slightly taken aback by this reasonably priced piece of equipment, Phil sourced not one, but two clamps on eBay. They come in twos and cost £16. He then modified it to widen the jaws and created a clever adjustable gizmo to control the hoop width. It worked brilliantly. A saving to the club of £169.90! I think he should go into business undercutting the competition.
Next challenge … to produce a few perfectly pink secondary balls!
Dreaming of the Summer?
This is a typical winter photo from our club. Not a square inch of skin to be seen; gloves and bobble hats mandatory.
Photo credit Jill P cleverly updating Andy L’s pic.
A spiky visitor
Yesterday this little fella was seen rummaging around the car park.
We have Winter Lawns!
A team of dedicated pedants turned up today to precisely measure and position all our hoops to their winter settings. All four lawns have been rotated 90⁰ and shrunken to about 70% of their summer size. This involves excavating 48 new hoop holes (plus 4 centre pegs). The hoops are alluringly aligned and virtually vertical. Any complaints can be directed to Andy 🙁
Here is Chris showing excellent technique with the massive corkscrew. Years of practice with bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon finally pay off.
And here is Steve wrestling expertly with a piece of string that was, just 10 seconds earlier, perfectly unknotted.
Many thanks to Brian, Chris, Steve, Simon M, David, Des , Phil and Andy for undertaking this onerous task! We rewarded ourselves by polishing off the left over cake from Finals’ Day
Finals’ Day – The Results
| AC Handicap | Simon D (8) | Mark (18) |
| GC Level Singles | Andy (6, 5) | Colin (7, 7) |
| GC High Handicap Singles | Chris (7) | Simon M (5) |
| GC Handicap Doubles | Phil & Marilyn (6) | Trish & Jill (7) |
| AC Short Croquet | Simon M (9) | Colin (14) |
| GC Level Doubles | Andy & Nigel (6) | Mark & David (7) |
| GC Handicap Singles | Ann (7) | Trish N (6) |
Finals’ Day – The Pics
Well, we got away with it. Finals’ Day was dry! And the sun even came out. There was an excellent crowd, lots of good croquet, fabulous food and a special atmosphere. This is what it’s all about.
Here are some pictures of the competition, the presentation and the celebration.
CPCC (+ 1) in Short Croquet Victory
On Saturday 5th October, a team from CPCC competed in Division 4 of the South West Federation Autumn short croquet tournament at Budleigh Salterton. The CPCC team was Fran Ralli, Ann Munton, Simon Munton and Chris Williams. (Chris was a guest player from Glamorgan as CPCC had difficulty in fielding a full team).
There were 4 teams in Division 4 (Bath Buns, CPCC B, Nailsea and Budleigh Salteron Mallets) and the format was 3 rounds of all play all. After these rounds CPCC were in the lead with 9 wins. There was then a play off between CPCC and the Mallets who were the second placed team.
At the end of the day CPCC took the trophy having won 11 out of their 16 games. Many thanks to our guest player Chris who won all of his games.
A moral SC victory at Bath?
This year, CPCC’s Short Croquet team came top of their block which meant they had to compete against Bath in the final.
This took place on Sunday 29th September, with the CPCC team (David Milford, Simon Dunk, Fran Ralli and Simon Munton) being the home team and Bath the away team. As the final took place in Bath, being host to them on their own lawns felt a little strange!
After the first round the score was 2 all, but by lunch CPCC were trailing by 3 games to 5. After the third round CPCC were trailing by 5 games to 7. To win outright, CPCC needed to win all 4 games of the last round, but only succeeded in winning 2 games meaning that Bath were the victors by 9 games to 7.
Interestingly, although CPCC lost the match, they did score more hoops than their opponents (158 to 154). Many thanks to David and Fran for stepping in at short notice.