British Open GC Championships held at Sussex County

The premier British GC event weas held at Sussex County this year. The doubles competition was won by Reg Bamford and Tobi Savage who beat Will Gee and Jack Goode.

Full report on the Croquet England website.

(Photo: Ray Hall)

Sussex wins inaugural GC Southern Challenge

Report by Bill Arliss, Manager of the competition

Some Background

This is a rebranded version of a competition that was started back in 2012 and run by the South East Croquet Federation (SECF, now re-branded as Croquet SouthEast). At that time we were looking for new competitions and one that sprung quickly to mind was a club version of the GC Inter Counties. The format of teams of four playing two singles and one doubles, level play GC appeared to be very popular and so we went ahead on that basis.

The response from the SECF clubs was so good that even in the first year, we had to run it as two separate divisions, 1 and 2 with twelve and eight teams participating. It grew even more in the following years to two second divisions, north and south but we also went outside the SECF boundaries to invite a few teams from neighbouring federations to strengthen division 1.

Regrettably all things came to a grinding halt with the pandemic, and we had to restart in 2023. The SECF decided that, as div 1 contained several non SECF teams, they would handover the management of this division to Sussuex County but continue with the second divisions them themselves. Because of the rather late decision making on this issue, the uptake was limited for 2024 due to lack of publicity but six teams met at Southwick on June 24/25 for an excellent weekend’s croquet. It is hoped that in future years we can increase the entry to twelve teams which gives an ideal format of all play all, once, and is the maximum that can be accommodated on the eleven lawns at Southwick.

This Year’s Event

The six teams entered were from Cheam, East Dorset, Guildford and Godalming, Hich Wycombe, Ryde and Sussex County. Although only four players were required each round, all but one club brought substitutes, some playing on one day only. The format started with an all-play-all twice, with the second meeting following after all first meetings had been concluded. As a weekend event, a time limit of 55 minutes had to be imposed but in practice it only applied to three singles and four doubles games out of a total of 30 games.

Sussex County surged ahead in these two-block rounds and after Round 9 had nine wins and only 3 individual games dropped. However East Dorset managed to secure their first match win of the day by beating Sussex in Round 10 2-1.

All teams were then ranked for the final playoffs into three pairs with each pair playing best of three games. The ranking order was:

1st Sussex County
2nd High Wycombe
3rd Guildford & Godalming
4th Ryde
5th Cheam
6th East Dorset

It was agreed that the 3th/4th match could be split into two separate matches to allow substitutes to be used. The ranking positions were maintained in the first and third playoffs with 2-1 wins but Ryde managed a jump into third position with a 4-2 win in the revised format.

Although Sussex had a very clear run in the blocks, the match with High Wycombe in the final went right to the wire. With each side having one match win, the first singles pairing arrived at hoop 13 in the third game, each with a ball in a scorable position. Ian Shore (High Wycombe) was first to go and tried a rather angled jump shot rather than clearing Bob Clark (Sussex County). Regrettably the angle was too great and Bob had a simple shot to win the Simon Carter Rose Bowl.

Thanks very much to Bill Arliss for managing this event and to the Catering team of Rachel Pointon, Sue Gale, Angela Marjoram, Rosemary Wyld, Arthur Flatt, Angela Avis, Rosemary Faulkner and Judith Price.

Congratulations to the Sussex County Team captained by Liz Farrow for winning the inaugural competition.

Full Results

Team placings at the end of the Block Stage

Individual results

(more results to follow)

Some photos of the event

Click the > symbol top right of image to hide the grid

Success for Sussex County in Longman Cup against Hurlingham

Sussex County went to Hurlingham for the second round of the Longman Cup, Croquet England's national knock-out handicap AC event.

The Hurlingham Club is "a green oasis of tradition and international renown bordering the River Thames in Fulham set in 42 acres of magnificent grounds". Preparations were under way for a tennis tournament and a sign appeared during the day on the door of the gentlemen's loo "Professional tennis players only". Facilities included a BBQ area about the size of our club kitchen.

The club does, however, lie underneath the flight path to Heathrow and so it is quite noisy.

Steve Chapman got us off to a good start with a convincing win but David Gillett lost. Chrissie Merrington and Simon Fenn-Tye staged a late rally in the doubles to give us the lead at lunchtime.

Steve won again but Chrissie lost. Simon overcame a forest of bisques to secure the match for Sussex County. In the final game David and his opponent were level when time was called. The opponent hit in and scored a point. David also hit in but failed to get in front of the hoop.

Sussex meet Roehampton or St Albans in round three.

Report by David Gillett

Summer Draw

1^st Prize £100 No. 1….Clive Hayton

2^nd Prize £75 No. 99……David Head

3^rd Prize £50 No. 83……Bob Clark

GC Open Singles 19th June 2024

On a windy but mostly fine "Summer's" day 30 players were divided into 5 blocks of six.

The winners were

Block A - Steve Chapman, 4 wins, net hoops +10; closely followed by Bob Clark with 4 wins and +9.

Block B - Brian Aikens, 4 wins + 4, followed by Konstantin Yudintsev 3 wins, +6

Block C - Michael Jay, 3 wins, +5 with Gavin Taylor second, also 3 wins, +4.

Block D - Francis Ainley, 4 wins and an impressive +12 and then Jill Richardson, 4 wins, +6

Block E - Jim Mander, 4 wins, +9; Graham Tucker, 3 wins , +5

Congratulations to all the winners and many thanks to Linda Davies and Anne Stanton for all their work preparing a lovely lunch.

Steve Chapment

Brian Aikens

Francis Ainley

Jim Mander

Further congratulations are due to the following, whose handicaps reduced following completion of the tournament: Simon Ancell 1, Francis Ainley 4, and Jim Mander 5.

Thanks to Vincent for managing the event.

Full results

Half day GC doubles 14th June

Block A
1st: Brian Aikens & Steve Chapman
2nd: Bob & Robyn Clark
3rd: Ivan Segal & David King

Block B
1st: Carol & Chris Bailey
2nd: Di Langridge & Rosemary Faulkner
3rd: Pam & Gerald Gooders

Block C
Winners: Peter Goldsmith & Peter Cave

Thanks to Roger for managing the event.

Full results

Paul Griffiths

Our congratulations to Sussex County member Professor Paul Griffiths who has been awarded an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours list for Services to Virology. Paul has had a long and distinguised career in virology research and in particular cytomegalovirus. He is the Patron of CMV Action, a charity dedicated to educating about the serious problems cytomegalovirus poses to unborn babies if a woman catches it during pregnancy.

Sussex County wins Croquet SouthEast Ladies Day

The Sussex Couny team of Pam Gooders, Deborah Marcus and Kathy McColgan won this year's Ladies Day organised by Croquet SouthEast (the new name of the South East Croquet Federation). Congratulations to them.

Full report on the Croquet SouthEast website.

Record amount raised for British Heart Foundation 

This year's Charity One Ball competition across the country raised £9,382.16 for the British Heart Foundation, a remarkable achievement.

Gabrielle Higgins was our local heat winner and the Regional Final at Surbiton which was won by David Long of Blewberry Croquet Club. The national final at Nottingham was won by Peter Bell of Bristol Croquet Club.

Next autumn and spring there will be one ball sessions to prepare your skills for next year's charity competition.

Diana Brothers Drawn Pairs Competition 2024

Thanks to Vincent and Roger for managing the day, and Fiona for overall planning.

Full results

The knock-out stage is as follows: 

Best of 3 games, 

Quarter final played by 1 August, semi by 1 September.