Fundraising Day for Prostate Cancer UK 21st September

The fundraising day, delayed after the deluge of the weekend before, proved to be an incredibly successful event raising over £2500 for Prostate Cancer UK. The charity can claim another 20% in Gift Aid from most of the donations that we have received through our Just Giving page, which alone topped £2000. Not only have we raised money, but I hope that we have raised awareness of this insidious cancer.

Members, families and friends turned up to have a go at croquet-with-a-difference. What did everyone think as they wielded their mallets to play bowls, skittles, racing croquet, the Game of Cards and of course the completely bonkers obstacle course?!  Prizes of chocolate, wine, and smiley or sad faced wooden spoons were handed out for good shots, bad shots, triumph or disaster.

There were some fantastic prizes taken home from a very successful raffle, and of course lots of tea and cake was consumed.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to the team who helped to plan and then pull everything together, and to the wider team of volunteers who helped to make everything run so smoothly and successfully. I’d also like to record a particular thanks to Vincent who amongst other things, set up the Just Giving page that has made all the difference.

Jo Crosby

Secretary's Shield is ours!

Congratulations to Sussex County team for their 5-2 win in the final of the AC Secretary's Shield. Here is Jonathan Isaac's report:

The Sussex County team battled their way round the M25 to Watford to play a very strong Peterborough team in the final of the Croquet England Secretary’s Shield.

Watford Croquet Club gave us a very warm welcome and supplied us with 2 very pleasant lawns situated in an attractive parkland setting.

The morning session consisted of one double and two single handicap games. Gabrielle Higgins & Simon Fenn-Tye won their doubles match. In the morning singles Jonathan Isaacs beat the current World Women’s Champion, Debbie Lines +11 and David Dickins narrowly lost -3 to scratch player Adrian Kirby.

The afternoon session consisted of 4 singles matches with wins by Simon Fenn-Tye +21, David Dickins +9 and Jonathan Isaacs +17, giving us an overall win of 5-2.

Watford Croquet Club were superb hosts supplying us with an excellent lunch and a glass of bubbly (non alcoholic) to celebrate our success at the end of the competition. They even had their own laser engraving machine enabling the Secretary of Croquet England to present us the Shield engraved with Sussex County as 2025 Champions!

This is the first time that SCCC have won this prestigious competition and praise must go to all the members of the team, not only in the final, but in the knockout rounds leading to this victory

Results:
Gabrielle Higgins & Simon Fenn-Tye beat Ian Lines & Stephen Cornelius
Jonathan Isaacs beat Debbie Lines
David Dickins lost to Adrian Kirby
Gabrielle Higgins lost to Debbie Lines
Jonathan Isaacs beat Ian Lines
Simon Fenn-Tye beat Adrian Kirby
David Dickins bea Stephen Cornelius

The club team: Simon Fenn-Tye, Gabrielle Higgins, Jonathan Isaacs and David Dickins

GC Singles competition 20th September 2025

Congratulations to the four division winners: Douglas Shand, Andrew Fall, Jo Crosby and Tim Bick.

The results can be found on CroquetScores and will be published here in due course.

Thanks to Richard Ellis for managing the event.

GC Half day singles

Despite the heavy weekend rain and a morning shower the lawns were in tip-top condition for the twenty players who entered this half-day Singles tournament.

There might not have been any rain but the players had to battle against a very strong wind which several times caused them to withdraw from their stance and start again.

There were five divisions of 4 with a range of handicaps from 1 to 12, evenly divided.

Division A was won comfortably by Morgan with 3 wins and an impressive +14 net hoops.

Division B was tighter with Stephen Collett (Compton) and Phil Harrison each with 2 wins but Stephen prevailed with +4 net hoops against Phil's +3.

Division C was even closer, Kathy and new member John Bartlett tied on 2 wins and +3. As Kathy had beaten John she was declared the winner.

In Division D, Tony Marjoram was the clear winner, 3 wins and +8 net hoops.

There was also a clear winner in Division E, Sue Kilby winning all 3 also with +8 net hoops.

Thanks to everyone for entering and battling through the wind and congratulations to the winners.

​Vincent

And thanks to Vincent for managing the event 

Morgan Case

Stephen Collett

Kathy McColgan

Tony Marjoram 

Sue Kilby

Unfortunately, the heavy rain on Saturday morning led to the postponement of the much anticipated croquet funday in aid of Prostate Cancer UK.

The good news is that we will be trying again on Sunday, 21 September, running in conjunction with Croquet & Cakes, from 1.00 onwards. Lawns will be available for those who just want to play croquet with other lawns set aside for fun and games.

The JustGiving page is still open for those who want to donate to this worthy cause. So far, we have raised £820, which is amazing. Thank you to all who have contributed. Click here to donate.

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible next Sunday

Vincent

The Sussex open championships were held this weekend. We had an entry of 22 which was an awkward number to deal with But the weather was fine and there close fought matches in all of the blocks.

On the Saturday the tournament was divided into four blocks two having 6 players and two having 5 players. The format allowed the top four in each block to progress to the first round of the knockout on Saturday afternoon which was a single 19 point game.

The local interest saw Liz Farrow, Richard Brooks, Ben Harwood, Jonathan Isaacs and Robin Wootton progress into the last 16.

On the Sunday the quarter final - again a 19 point match - saw Richard Brooks and Ben Harwood progress to the last 8. Richard played an old club member Neil Humphreys and won,  putting him into the Semi Final.

Ben had a very close match with the eventual winner of the tournament Miraslav Havlik, Miraslav winning through by 10 hoops to 8.

The semi final saw Richard against Andrew Hobbs and losing a best of three match 5-7 7-3-6-7.

The final, another close match, saw Miraslav beat Andrew Hobbs 7-6 7-6. The playoff for 3rd and forth places Alex Wood beat Richard Brooks 7-6.

Elsewhere, the Shield for positions 9- 16 was won by Richard Gardiner who beat Stephen Custance-Baker 7-3, 7-5 The play off for the Shield was won by Liz Farrow who beat Gerald O Brien 10-8.

The Plate which was for players who did not qualify for the Championship Knockout was won by Paul Green who won all 4 of his block matches.

All scores and positions are on CroquetScores.

Sussex Champion Miroslav Havlik

Andrew Hobbs, runner-up

Colin Britt, Bowl winner

Richard Gardiner, Shield winner

Paul Green, Plate winner

Thanks to Roger Sutton for managing the competition and to Andrew Fall for photos

How to enjoy yourself and play croquet

Video by Bill Arliss

GC Open Singles 30th August 2025

After the long hot summer the weather did not look particularly promising for the singles competition on Saturday. In the end we managed to get through event without any disruptions. Just an odd light shower.

There were four divisions with six players each so everybody only had to play five games each.

The first division, Division A, had a clear winner with Tony Jolly winning all his 5 games. With the other divisions things were a little closer.

Division B had four players with three wins each and Francis Ainley and Andrew Fall each had net hoops of +4. Andrew had however beaten Francis so was declared the winner of the division.

Division C was again decided on net hoops with five players having three wins each. Joanne Crosby was the winner on +9 against Phil Harrison with +5.

Tim Bick came out the winner of Division D with four wins after a last game decider which went to the Golden Hoop.

We managed to get away before the rain set in around 4pm.

Andrew Stewart

Thanks to Andrew for managing the event

Tony Jolly

Andrew Fall

Jo Crosby

Tim Bick

Despite a valiant effort, the Southwick underdogs could not overcome the mighty Surbiton team of Samir Patel, Stephen Mulliner, Phil Eardley and Adam Swinton in the semi-final of the AC Interclub Championship. With a team including the current numbers 4 and 8 in the world, whose combined grade was nearly a thousand points more than the Southwick team of Dom Nunns, Gabrielle Higgins, Mark Fawcett and Paul Castell, Surbiton’s 6-1 victory was perhaps not entirely unpredictable.

It was nonetheless an enjoyable day, with the weather at least comfortably bettering the forecast. Samir and Stephen making swift work of all their matches, completing triple peels in all three with Dom and Gabrielle making a mere 2 hoops between them, allowed Stephen an opportunity to introduce Samir, Dom and Gabrielle to Peel Croquet, a variant of AC with much greater interactivity requiring much more accurate and adventurous play and offering much more tactical complexity. And a team of novice caterers have learned that if everyone brings a little extra ‘just in case’ you will end up with far too much food, so we were well fed.

We wish Surbiton the very best of luck in the final against Bowdon.

Gabrielle Higgins

Croquet South East GC Level Play League Sussex County v Compton

On 28th August Sussex County played the last of their four 2025 fixtures in the Croquet South East GC Level Play League which was a home match against Compton Croquet Club

The prolonged summer dry spell had just decided to come to an end on that very day, making it one of those days when thoughts of ‘should or should not additional clothing be added to the kit bag’ came into reckoning. Those who took heed of the forecast were right to do so as, at the very moment the first ball was struck, the rain began to fall. A quick scramble for waterproofs was made by the majority and yet, after ten minutes, the sun was shining once again.

Play was like that for the most of the morning with players disappearing into the courtside huts or under nearby trees for brief spells when the rain just got too much and at other times, shedding their outer layers to enjoy the welcome periods of sunshine.

This Hokey-Cokey style of play clearly suited the Sussex County team who found themselves 3-0 up at lunchtime without dropping a single game.

The rain passed through during lunchtime making play in the afternoon far more consistent in terms of wardrobe choices. Sussex County continued to play strongly and won three of the four afternoon Singles matches making the overall result 6-1 to the home side.

In the excitement of achieving this result, which made it four wins out of four in this league, a team photograph was completely forgotten! However, well done to Brian Aikens, David Dickins, Ben Harwood and Morgan Case for their victory in this fixture and to all players who have represented us in this league over the 2025 season.

Brian Aikens