Intermediate North v Swindon

A team of 4 travelled to Swindon and the sun came out to welcome us

In the morning Mike Tracy and Brian Roynon played the doubles Brian make a good start taking his ball around 11 hoops to rover. Mike then took his ball around 7 hoops to give the Nailsea pair a commanding lead. The final score was +7 on time.

Libby Howard- Blood fought hard with her opponent but lost -1 on time.

Terry Young played well and won +12 on time.

In the afternoon Nailsea continued the fight. Libby managed to win despite her 1^st ball being pegged out by her opponent. 26-19 to win +7.

Brian also pegged out 26-15 to win +11. Mike peg out win 26-12 to win +14.

Terry battled well to finish ahead by 21-19 to win +2 on time. This gave Nailsea a 6-1 win.

Nailsea Central South v Weston-Super-Mare at Weston

The match was a close one with Weston running out the winners by a score of 10 1/2 to 9 1/2.  The Weston team were predominately high handicap players and Nailsea were not quite able to overcome the extra turns against them in several close encounters.

Twelve players contested the Michael Poole Cup this year, seven from Nailsea and five visitors. The Nailsea representatives were Peter Dyke, Erica Malaiperuman, Brian McCausland, Robert Upton, Kathy Wallace, Brian Roynon and Linda Shaw (the last two playing in their first advanced rules tournament. The visitors were Mike Salisbury, Richard Jackson and Pat Jackson from Bristol, Jeffrey Rushby from Southwick and Brian Shorney from many places including Kington Langley. The conditions were overcast and almost warm on Saturday, then hot and sunny on Sunday. One would have expected the lawns to be quite fast as John Wallace had cut them in both directions on Friday evening, but as a result of the early morning dew, humid atmosphere and the grass growing like a rocket this turned out not to be the case. John came back and did another cut on Sunday morning and the speed went up significantly. The hoops were newly set to an accurate 1/16^th” and proved to be challenging, so the referee was called many times to watch hampered shots after a ball had just crept through a hoop with the escape ball in front of the hoop. This goes some way to explain why only five of the thirty games finished inside the 3 hour time limit, Kathy having the fastest win in 1 hour 45 minutes.

The leaders on Saturday evening were Brian M and Erica on 3 wins, followed by Robert Upton, Peter, Jeffrey and Richard on 2 wins.  On Sunday morning Brian beat Erica, Robert beat Jeffrey and Richard beat Peter, so going into the final round there were four potential winners.  Brian played Robert whilst Erica played Richard.  If Robert had won then a tie break would have been needed to decide between Robert and the winner of the other game.  Much to the manager’s relief Brian won, achieving five wins out of five games.

Hethus took the Michael Poole Cup home, exactly as he did in 2014, so congratulations to him. There was a tie between Kathy Wallace and Richard Jackson for the so-called Moroccan award (for the best improvement in index by someone other than the Cup winner), so they both got a bottle of wine. Kathy also won a bottle of beer for her fastest win and Brian Roynon also won a bottle of beer for the biggest upset by beating Richard Jackson, their handicaps being 11 and 5 respectively.

Coral Harrison and Liz Tracy did magnificent lunches, Linda celebrated her birthday and a good time was had by all. Brian Shorney congratulated our club for providing an opportunity for players in this handicap range (5 to 12) to play advanced rules croquet and expressed the hope that more clubs would follow suit.

Mike Tracy (tournament manager)

With the luxury of no double banking, lawns set out and fine weather in prospect, it was with a certain level of shock that some pairs learned of the bisques that were to be stacked against them, but play began in good spirit nevertheless.

Round one saw Mary and Pat neck and neck with Brian and Sandra and only half an hour left to play but the ladies used their time wisely and well, finishing the game +6t.

David and Brenda’s partnership provided value for money in the entertainment stakes – they started with their best loss of the day: -1t to Rob and Neil P.

Terry and Doreen monopolised the lawn taking both balls to 3 back but Kathy and James used their last 30 minutes to pull through to a +3t win.

Brigit and Rosemary had a close game against Jim and Tony winning +1t.

An excellent lunch in the sunshine and it was time to think about some supplementary awards for this competition –

• Most put-upon partner?
• Greatest entertainment value?
• Partnership most likely to end in violence?
• Any more suggestions …?

We hit the post-prandial doldrums in the second round but entered the third and final round with the semi-finalists far from certain. The thunder-threatening clouds passed over, the heat reached a comfortable level, and all was well with the world.

This seemed to revitalise play – sustained by peripatetic tea and cakes (the waitress that is, not the refreshments) – and it wasn’t until the final games had been played in each block that the positions were clear.

The results

Semi Finals

OBE COMPETITION – 17th May 2016

A happy day yet tinged with sadness as the game played for this event “The 10 Shot Game” was introduced to Nailsea Club by our member Ian Telfer and has been adopted as the format for the OBE Trophy.  Ian, who sadly passed away earlier this month, had been a competitor for the last two years, having won the trophy on both occasions.

This year we saw two new faces joining us (both youthful OBE’s) Susan and David Pinney from  Bristol Croquet Club and along with our own Mary Barnes, Jim Gregory and Terry Young,  play started at a very civilised time of 10.30.

Two 50 min. games were played before lunch, the newcomers getting to grips with the two laws incorporated into Association Croquet rules.

After warming bowls of soup and hot rolls another two games were played – Susan and David now understanding the game even better and after a well earned cup of tea and cake the final game took place.

The Nailsea players took the top 3 positions and David was a very close fourth, but Jim was this year’s convincing winner having won all of his 4 games.