Club

Croquet

Wrest Park

4 Club Trophy 2025

report by Richard Keighley

This GC competition is not an EACF event but one organised annually by clubs from Leighton Linslade, Northampton, Watford and Wrest Park. Each club takes a turn in hosting a one-day tournament.

Games are played level in teams of three with a minimum aggregate handicap of 4. Each club hosts a match in a tournament format in two all-play-all blocks of singles with cross block play-offs to determine how many points are awarded to each club. The winner is the club with most points at the end of the season.

2025 proved to be a see-saw season for Wrest Park with a nail-biting climax. The opening match at Leighton-Linslade was won by the host club with 24 points, pipping Wrest Park with 23 points. Next, our home match was won by Watford with 27 points but a gallant performance by captain Les Heard  enabled us to claim second place with 24 points. Cumulatively, Wrest Park was ahead at this stage.

Unfortunately, our team members all had an off day at Watford mustering only 15 points and third place. The running totals of points for each club was as follows:

Leighton-Linslade 70, Watford 65, Wrest Park 62, Northampton 48.

Northampton hosted the final match in the series. Our team was Les Heard, Michael Tideswell and Gill Brewer with handicaps totalling 11, compared with Leighton-Linslade’s total of 6 and Watford’s total of 2 which earned them a penalty of minus 4 points. Northampton’s total was 6.

In block play, Michael beat Ross Bagni (0) by 7-6 and Gill achieved the same feat by beating Ross by the same score in the play-offs. Les Heard was the overall winner, beating Nick Archer (-2) 7-3 in the final. Tension mounted as the calculation of the season’s totals was made with the following rather startling outcome:

Leighton-Linslade  85 points, Wrest Park 84 points, Watford 83 points, Northampton 83 points.

Wrest Park’s team from Les Heard, Terry Collis, George Collin, Michael Tideswell, Tim and Gill Brewer.

Les Heard kindly relieved me of responsibility of organising teams for these matches. He was an outstanding captain and his team missed winning the trophy by the narrowest of margins. For what it is worth, L-L's team featured only players who were WP members for all 4 matches!


© Wrest Park Croquet Club