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

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