Sussex County wins 2024 Murphy Shield

Congratulations to our Murphy Shield Team on their victory over Chester in the final played at a neutral venue, Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, on Sunday 6th October 2024.

The Murphy Shield is a national knock out GC Competition organised by Croquet England and was established in 2010. Twenty clubs entered the competition this year and, although coming close in 2014 when we lost a very even match to Durham, Sussex County have never won the competition before.

Each team is made up of four players who must have an aggregate handicap of at least 8. The restrictions are that the competition is for players with a handicap of 2 and above, although one player in the team may have a handicap of 1.

In each fixture there are six individual singles matches and one doubles match (all the best of three games).

Because of shifting handicaps of our squad throughout the season, making some players no longer eligible to take part, we have called upon a variety of players to represent us from the first round right through to the final. Fortunately, we seem to have been always able to field a strong team for each match which shows the depth of quality players within the Club. In addition to our winning finalists, Simon Ancell, Vincent L’Estrange, David Dickens and David King, other players who represented us in the earlier rounds were, Brian Aikens, Simon Fenn-Tye, and Konstantin Yudintsev.

Finalists David King, Vincent L'Estrange, Simon Ansell and David Dickins

The earlier rounds were regional and, in our path to the final, we had had wins against Cheam, Surbiton and Guildford.

Waiting for us in the final were Chester who had battled through against Ashby, Durham and Watford.

In the morning’s play there were some very hard fought games with each individual match having one 7-6 scoreline. However, things went well for us and we went into the lunch break with a 2-1 lead meaning that, in the afternoon’s play, we needed to win two of the remaining four individual Singles matches to clinch the match.

Vincent came up with the first of the required two wins and Simon scored the winning hoop in his three set match to bring the Murphy Shield to Sussex County for the first time in its fourteen year history. The final score was Sussex County 4.5 Chester 2.5.

The trophy was presented by George Collin who represented Wrest Park in hosting the match as well as representing Croquet England in his capacity as Trustee.

Thank you to Chester for a very enjoyable match and well done to our history making team.

(Report by Brian Aikens)