Christmas Lunch a lovely occasion for all

Thanks so much to everyone who helped make today's Christmas lunch such an enjoyable event: in the kitchen preparing and serving an excellent lunch behind the bar and all those who prepared the canteen beforehand. A lot of work and very much appreciated.

Great to see some old friends like Gene and Don Mears and Brian Kitching.

And well done Roger for finding a new use for Monopoly!

Plaudits for Gabrielle Higgins and Liz Drury in this year's Croquet England Awards for Most Improved Player. Gabrielle won the Steel Memorial Bowl and Liz won the Colman Trophy

Congratulations to them both.

Two other club members received nominations: Paul Green and Konstantin Yudintsev.

Wintry day for GC competition

 Twenty hardy souls gathered for a 9.30 start on a fine but chilly day. The sun finally broke through in the afternoon but the north westerly wind reminded us that Winter is almost upon us.

Block A, with 8 competitors, managed 6 rounds at the end of which Tony Jolly and Liz Farrow were level pegging with 5 wins and +9 net hoops each. However, Tony had beaten Liz just before lunch so he was declared the winner.

In Block B, with 6 entrants, John Low won all his games, four 7-5 and one 7-6, so all very close but clearly ahead of Paul Green and David Dickins with 3 wins each.

Block C, also with 6 players, saw everyone win at least 2 games. Jill Richardson won the Block with 4 wins, just ahead of Sue Nicholas with 3.

Despite the heavy rain earlier in the month the lawns played well and many thanks are due to Steve & Ray for cutting and marking them before the tournament.

Grateful thanks as well to Rachel Pointon for preparing a welcome & warming soup plus a ploughman's for lunch.

Finally, it was nice to see Martin Daniels back at Sussex County after his recent problems.

Vincent L'Estrange
(Thanks to Vincent for managing the event)

Full Results

Club competitions final results in

Presentations of the last few club competition trophies were made by Clive Hayton at the club on November 11

Phil Dunk being presented with the Sussex Gold Cup

Paul Green, Victor Ludorum for Golf Croquet

He also won the Golf Croquet Doubles Competition with Simon Fenn-Tye

Dominic Nunns being presented with the Moore Cup, the sixth occasion on which he has won it, an equal record with Rutger Biejderwellen for the cup in its current incarnation. It was previously the Bryan Challenge Cup from 1904 - 1927 and then the Simeon Challenge Cup until 1976. As the Simeon Challenge Cup it was won 6 times also by W E Moore, after whom it is now named, but 11 times by Leslie Kirk Greene, so a challenge to Dominic between now and 2029!

Paul reports "Mark Fawcett and l managed to play the Shield final and despite pegging myself off in attempting a cross pegged leave and thanks to Mark approaching and running hoop six as if it was penult, I became victorious plus 8, plus 7!"

Congratulations to all the winners this year. The full list is here and the report on the end of season dinner and main trophy presentation is here.

A chance for new GC players and those with higher handicaps to get into more competitive play

On a rare sunny day, 12 members with 7+ handicaps gathered for a half-day level play GC tournament on Tuesday 7th October. Postponed from October, the competition was intended to encourage high-handicappers with little or no experience of competitions to enter.

Three blocks of 4 played three games each with impressive speed to complete their games by 12.30.  Nerves soon settled and there were several very close fought games.

Block A was won by Kathy McColgan with 2 wins and + 6 hoops, closely followed by Gail Dowd who also had 2 wins with -2 hoops.

In Block B, Karen Hayton won all 3 of her games with +5 hoops, with Linda Davies in second place with 2 wins and +3 hoops.

Alan Innes was the winner in Block C having also won all 3 games and an impressive +9 hoops.  Martin Avis took 2nd place with 2 wins and +6 hoops.

Well done to all 12 players, I think some of those handicaps will soon be much lower!   We look forward to seeing you at future competitions.

Linda Gavigan 

Thanks to Linda for organising and managing this event

UK v USA in Florida, 7-12 November 2023

From 7th to 12th of this month the Solomon Trophy will be played for in Florida, America. This is a prestigious AC competition with teams of 6 from England battling it out with America.

We wish Gabrielle (our club member) all the best as she takes part. She is one of the top AC players in England and was runner up in the Womens’ AC worlds in New Zealand earlier this year.

The England team is 

Debbie Lines (captain) 
Alain Giraud 
Gabrielle Higgins 
Stephen Mulliner 
Mark van Loon 
Aston Wade

Amongst their opponents are Matthew Essick and Ben Rothman. Both have won the GC Worlds in Southwick (2022 and 2019) and Matthew was runner up in the AC Worlds at Hurlingham this year.

For those of you who love croquet it will be worth watching.

Details of the video link when they are known.

Today there was a discussion about the coming weather and the likely effects on the lawns for the competition on Friday.

With heavy rain on Thursday and very strong winds, we felt the lawns were likely to be both very wet and covered in debris from trees etc. Conditions for play were likely to be difficult or unpleasant and importantly to cause unnecessary damage (32 players on 4 lawns all day) so we reluctantly decided to cancel the event.

Of course Friday may prove to be a lovely day but I think it is better to have clarity a day or two beforehand rather than leave a decision to the last minute.

John

End of Season Dinner and Awards Ceremony

Very many thanks to the Catering Team who produced a lovely meal to celebrate the end of the 2023 season and to hold the awards ceremony for the club competitions.

The summary of all the competition winners is on this page.

Not all the winners were present sadly, but there was plenty of silverware on display to take home at the end of the evening.

The awards were made before the meal.

Jerry Key with the Committee Cup

David Dickins with the Handicap Singles trophy

Jim Mander with the GC Improvers trophy

Pam Gooders with the Freddy Reynold trophy

... and the Bush Cup

.... and the Shine Salvers with Gerald Gooders

.... and the AC Victor Ludorum trophy

Morgan Case with the Quaiche

Steve Chapman, most improved AC player, with the Chandler Shield

All the winners who were present. 

Pam Gooders with the evening's haul.

Thanks to Ray Hall, Morgan Case and John Low for the pictures

Your intrepid reporter asked Liz Farrow, Club Captain, what the policy was on engraving club trophies:

Liz tells me

Trophies for our internal competitions are engraved by the club.

We are now trying to make sure that trophies are engraved in October for the winners of that year -ie if you won it in 2023 your name should go on it in October 2023.
 
This is not possible for all trophies due to various reasons, so don’t be worried if your trophy isn’t engraved with your name. 
This will go onto the trophy next time we engrave.

Please ask me if you are unsure about anything to do with engraving.
 

Since we are on the subject of trophies, if you win one from another club or from Croquet England, then their policy may be different so do enquire. The South East Federation engraves all their trophies on behalf of clubs that win them.

GC Level Play Singles Competition 21 October 2023

A difficult week weatherwise for croquet: the advance forecast for Friday was horrendous and for Saturday, the competition day, not much better. Discussions on cancelling held earlier in the week as doing so at the last minute is never helpful for players and catering volunteers. Frances cancelled her short croquet course module on the Friday but the regretted it as the forecast proved completely out, with a day of sunshine instead of storms. Oh well.

As it was, Saturday also looked ominous even the day before and we did have a fair few showers until about 2pm; but then the sun came out and a pleasant afternoon followed, to the extent that quite a few players had an extra game after the competition ended.

Entry was rather lower than usual as out winter competitions are usually over-subscribed and eventually 16 players took part in two groups: a higher handicapped group playing a block of five rounds with six players; and a lower handicapped group playing a five round Swiss with ten players. I don't think Sussex County has used the Swiss format for its GC one competitions before, as it requires some time between rounds and can be more uncertain in producing a result than a block; and so it proved in this event. However, it does have the advantage for improving players that they get to play opponents who would otherwise be in a higher block.

As a winter competition no jumping was allowed so these were not handicap card or ranking games.

The block event was comprehensively won by Graham Tucker who was unbeaten in all his games. Congratulations to him. It was also a pleasure to see two newer players taking part, one at least in her first competition. I hope they both enjoyed the experience, even if they didn't win as many games as they would have liked. Do come again!

The Swiss event had 10 players in the handicap range of -1 to 4 so provided plenty of opportunities for the higher end to play better players; and so it proved. By the end of round three Bridget Goodman (2) was on 3 wins, ahead of Jane Powell (4), David Dickins (4), Konstantin Yudintsev (3) and Richard Brooks (-1), all on 2 wins. The fourth round ended with 4 players on 3 wins, and the Manager was in trouble! These resolved themselves to two players on 4 wins after the final round - Richard Brooks and David Dickins - but of course they hadn't played each other. As the sun was out and there was no time constraint, so a play-off followed which was won by Richard 7-4. Congratulations to Richard and also to David for an excellent performance on the day.

A special thank you to Steve Chapman and Ben Harwood our grounds contractor; Ben opened lawns 7-9 for us to play on rather than lawns 1-3 (which would have been unplayble with the rain, and Steve prepared them up with good hoop settings and smart new lines. Thank you very much.

Thanks also to Rachel Pointon for providing and preparing an excellent light lunch, even though not many had requested it; and puttin up with the Manager changing his mind about when lunch would be, to take advantage of a dry spell. The time our catering volunteers put in to buying, preparing and serving lunch on these occasions is very much appreciated by those who eat it.

Full results