Somerset – the best county in the UK!

Andy and Colin were in the Somerset team who last weekend won the Division 1 Inter-County Championship at Southwick. This was the first time Somerset had won in five years and broke a run of Nottinghamshire dominance.

Twelve counties were represented in the competition, with four to six players in each team. Every county played every other county and each round consisted a doubles game and two singles games. On day one we played six matches and won five of them, only losing narrowly to Essex. On day two we won our first four matches, setting up a final ‘winner-takes-all’ encounter with mighty Nottinghamshire, the best team on paper and losers of just one match themselves.

Colin and Andy played really well in the doubles, consistently clearing from distance and successfully jumping to take the win. Meanwhile, on the adjoining lawn, Rachel Gee (former ladies world champion) and her husband Will, a ferociously hard-hitting international-standard player, were playing David Goacher and Dom Aarvold respectively. Dom pulled off a fantastic win (7-4) against Will and so the trophy was ours.

Andy, David Goacher (Bristol), Stephen Custance-Baker (Taunton Deane), Colin, Dom Aarvold (Bristol) and Neil Fillery (Taunton Deane)
Our mascot – the Somerset Dragon … and the all-important cup!

Played 4, lost 4. But the hoops were really tight!

This year the Level Play team have been struggling in the Premier League, having won promotion last year. It’s proved to be tough and our match against Bristol CC on Tuesday 13th August was no exception. Bristol, still in contention to win the league, fielded a strong team. The match was played in a fantastic spirit as many of the players knew each other and, most importantly of all, we managed to finish before the forecast rain. The final score was Bristol 14, CPCC 6. So, we unfortunately finish bottom of our league and now face the prospect of relegation back to our natural home in the Level Pay (North) League. The silver lining is there will be less widespread travel to our matches next season.

As ever, todays biggest challenge was to find an interesting photo to accompany this article. On two separate occasions the black ball got stuck in the hoop it was trying to run! When the hoops are tight, 1/32nd of an inch clearance either side of the ball, and on hot days this is not as unusual as you might think. It is often the black ball that sticks as it is thought it absorbs more heat and therefore expands slightly more than other balls. In our case the ball was found to be very slightly oval because it could run the hoop cleanly, but when turned it stuck fast. Colin, whose ball it was, happily blamed the “egg-shaped ball” for all his previous unsuccessful shots!

On both occasions the referee was called and the hoop was re-set and the shot re-played.

Handicap A Team in brilliant defeat!

On Tuesday 6th August CPCC Handicap A Team hosted Bath for a closely fought match in which CPCC narrowly lost 10.5 to 9.5 hoops. However, the loss was in fact a brilliant victory! For the Camerton & Peasedown team finish the season atop their league. Congratulations! They will probably now progress to play another league-topping team in the South West region. Their next opponents are as yet unknown, but the team of Ann, Marion (capt), Phil, Jill S, Charles (empty chair – went home before photo!), Nigel and Jill P should fear no-one!

Summer BBQ (and games)

Saturday 27th July brought excellent weather and our summer BBQ.

Fran had also devised fiendishly clever croquet-themed games involving running exaggerated double-width hoops to finish in a specified area – not as easy as it looks.

Another game involved knocking over wooden targets for points. The further away the target, the more points were scored.


… and even a game of ‘proper’ croquet broke out

… followed by the all-important barbecue itself.

A day of fun, frolics and friendship was had by one and all. To be repeated!

National Doubles Championship

Colin and Andy travelled to the perfect lawns and weather of Budleigh Salterton to try their luck at the National Doubles Championship.

A field of 16 pairs including many England (and a few New Zealand) players were split into two blocks on Saturday. Our pair won four of their seven games and therefore progressed to the Sunday knockout rounds.

These took the form of the best of three 13-point games, and kicked off at 9am with the quarter-finals. Colin and Andy won theirs 2-0. In the semi-final they came up against a very strong pairing of Chris Clarke and Helen Reeves of New Zealand. Colin and Andy took the first game but couldn’t maintain their form while their opponents upped their game and finally lost out 1-2.

This meant they were in the 3rd/4th play-off against another kiwi, Jenny Clarke (Chris’s wife and the second best woman player in the world) and her partner, Roger Goldring, a solid, straight-hitting competitor from the UK. Any and Colin took the first game and Jenny and Roger took the second. As they were about to start the deciding game, the final finished on another lawn and so the pull of tea and cake proved too much and all players agreed to shake hands and call it a draw. Honours even. Colin and Andy (and indeed Jenny and Roger) are therefore 3rd= in the 2024 National Doubles Championship.

Andy and Colin heading for the cake!

High Handicap GC team win against Bath

CPCC’s High Handicap team welcomed 6 players from Bath on a cloudy day with a few very light showers. The first round of four games had to be played on two lawns double-banked, as the groundsman was still working on lawns 3 and 4 when play started at 10am. CPCC took the lead 3-1 in those games and kept their noses in front all day, running out 11½ – 8½ winners. There were a number of very close games, with CPCC winning two on the golden hoop. The very competitive nature of the match was illustrated by the fact that only two of the twenty games were won 7-3; all the rest were closer. Three of CPCC’s players (Simon Munton, June Farley and Peter Buchanan) won 3 of their 4 games, while Bath’s most successful player was Valerie Stanley with 4 wins from 5 games. Referee Nigel Wulcko (with his canine assistant Pepper) made a very valuable contribution to the day’s proceedings, with the Bath captain saying that she had learnt some useful lessons.

Reporter: Peter Buchanan

CPCC & Bath teams with Referee’s Assistant

Holes appear in the clubhouse

First … Don’t Panic!

This might not look like much, but here are the first five of many holes we are drilling in the sub-floor blockwork of the clubhouse. This will provide much needed ventilation and prevent underfloor rot, which I’m sure none of us wants!

Level Play team lose out to Budleigh

Rain was forecast, but as you can see it turned out sunny when the Level Play team hosted Budleigh Salterton. As a club with 11 (perfect) lawns and over 200 members, Budleigh have lots of talent to choose from and they came with a strong team of six with handicaps of 0, 2, 2, 2, 2 and 3.

After the first round of games honours were even, but we had then had a disastrous round, losing all 4 games. We then traded blows with them pre- and post-lunch before they finally pulled ahead to win 13-7.

Notably, four of the games we narrowly lost on the golden hoop 6-7. Budleigh showed nerves of steel to run the 13th hoop from the boundary and attempt (successful) long jump shots at hoop 13 too. The golden hoop lesson for us to learn is to go for it if you have the chance.


Gerry Williams lines up his golden hoop attempt – Charles looks on

The only oddity about Budleigh is their end-of-match hand shaking technique. Here we see Charles and Des on the left engaging in a traditional face-to-face, arms slightly bent gesture. The opposition, on the other hand, go for the outstretched, over the shoulder, no eye-contact pressing of the flesh.

It’ll never catch on!

CPCC team : Colin (capt), Phil, Charles, Des, David and Andy

Victory on Election Day!

Short Croquet Match v Lym Valley 04.07.24

Team: Ann Munton H6, Simon Dunk H6, Simon Munton H6, Mo Boys H5

Election day dawned and life went on as usual at Lym Valley when the Short Croquet Team arrived to play the second of our matches this season.  The sun was out and the Lym valley team made us very welcome, then explained about their lawns, half of which are on the outfield of the cricket pitch. During the spring this area had been a lake and now was so dry that large cracks were abundant, not to mention some mysterious holes, probably made by the local wild life. It was a challenge to say the least and made for some interesting and frustrating play.

Having decided that each of our team would stay on the same lawn for the whole day, we drew straws resulting in Ann and Mo using the field and Simons D and M the lawns. This may or may not have made a difference to the outcome, but both Simons won all four of their games and Ann won two. We were playing against 3 H10s a H4 and H 3.5.

The result was 10 – 6 to us: 100% wins so far!!

Some interesting distraction while waiting to play was the local primary school children having great fun during their games time and an after school, parent supervised, water battle in the sun. Thankfully it was held well away from our games.

Well done team.

Mo Boys