Club

Croquet

Wrest Park

AC All England Handicap regional final 9-10 August 2025

As its name suggests, this event is open to every player in the country. Anyone wanting to enter plays in a preliminary event at their own club (or by applying to play in the event at their nearest club if unattached), and the winners go through to the regional final. The number going through from each club depends on the number taking part in the club event. Wrest Park’s club event (the Ashwell Cup) had eight entries which gave us two places at the regional final, these being taken by Tim Nurse and John Bevington (who was substituting for Peter Rothwell).

Surbiton was the venue for the regional final and there were 14 players: three from Ealing, two each from Guildford, Tunbridge Wells, Surbiton and Wrest Park, and one each from Merton, Rother Valley and Watford. Handicaps ranged from 16 to 0 (average 9.4). Manager Andy Dibben arranged the format as a five round Swiss, using his program to work out the rounds after a random draw for the first round with the condition that players in the first round would not be drawn against another player from the same club. The results were displayed on a big screen in the pavilion. The weather was hot and sunny throughout, and the Surbiton lunches were as good as ever. Saturday evening was enlivened by noisy flocks of parakeets flying back and forth.

The lawns at Surbiton. In the distance are the pavilion, the open marquee for alfresco lunches and the spire of St Matthew’s church.

The lawns were fast, but in spite of the watering system there were some crusty areas devoid of grass, and some rough patches near hoops meant that approaches needed careful judgement. All this, coupled with three hour time limits and six of the seven games in each round being double-banked, resulted in only nine of the 35 games finishing within time. One reason for this is that players with plenty of bisques at their disposal may be relative beginners and are likely to take more time thinking about what to do, especially if something goes wrong. They may also be unfamiliar with some of the laws. If someone goes to run the wrong hoop then clearly you cannot forestall but must wait until it’s happened before pointing it out. On the other hand if you, as the more experienced player, play a shot that leaves your opponent’s ball in the jaws of a hoop, do you know that he or she is aware they are entitled to a lift if they don’t ask the question themselves? On an occasion when this happened to John he decided to tell his opponent that he was entitled to a lift, and discovered that his opponent thought that he was only entitled to a lift if both his balls were wired, and also didn’t know that he would still have a lift in his next turn if the ball in the hoop had remained untouched in the interim. As he went on to win +24 with an hour and four bisques to spare it hardly mattered, but the point stands. What would you have done?

Andy also had to act as tournament referee but was only rarely called upon. On one occasion he had to judge whether a ball was on or off, a decision made more difficult by the fact that the laser guided line marker had had to traverse a rough patch on the south boundary across an old line, so the edge was indistinct and two mallets had to be used as aids. After much deliberation the ball was adjudged to be on, much to John’s opponent’s relief. Another occurred in the final round when John and Tim were playing each other, double banking with Jonathan Lambton and Simon Emdin (he of the +24 win mentioned earlier). Tim was in a break, and Jonathan’s balls were close together on the south boundary. Simon hit in from distance, displacing both balls. He had to ask which he had roqueted first (blue), but then went to take croquet from black. We thought we might know what to do next but weren’t sure. Consulting the Laws book didn’t help so Andy was called over. He then spent some time poring over the labyrinth of lengthy sub-clauses and the meaning of the phrase “the error is rectified” before concluding that there was no penalty and Simon could continue by taking croquet from blue. It’s Law 28.5, by the way, but don’t look in the index for the obvious “Taking croquet from the wrong ball”. Lawspeak has this as “Taking croquet unlawfully from a live ball”. Now you know.

Andy Dibben using two mallets to adjudge whether brown is off the lawn.

Tim had had the lawn to himself while this was going on and was playing well. He finished his first break by cross-wiring John vertically across the peg. John missed, and Tim got to peg and rover (he had a bisque left and may have considered the peel) and left his balls a couple of feet apart north and south of rover just to the east of it. John had pink for hoop 3 somewhere around hoop 2 and white (for hoop 1) south of hoop 3. The shot with pink at the balls at rover might miss altogether, hit cleanly or, given the proximity of the hoop, even hit the hoop and with luck rebound onto the northerly of the two balls. It missed by a whisker and went clean through the hoop to finish a few feet beyond it. Tim didn’t need to take advantage of this gift, running rover and pegging out to win +24. As the other games still had an hour to play we didn’t wait for the presentation and headed home.

The winner was Robin Kaighin (Rother Valley, 8), who with Richard Perkins (Guildford, 16) and Margaret Page (Surbiton, 16) won four games out of five. The fourth player to go through to the national final is Jon Savage (Tunbridge Wells, 10), who had three wins. Tim finished with three wins and the possibility of playing in the final as second reserve, and John was one of three with a single win. There did not appear to be a trophy for the winner. Given that CqE is trying to encourage competitive AC one can only hope that this error is rectified.

The national final is at Guildford. The venue and date for the final are fixed at the start of the season,  and the venues for the regional finals were chosen based on their availability on the scheduled date and their proximity to the majority of clubs who entered in 2024. At the Surbiton regional final, of the eight clubs represented only two (not counting Ealing) were from north of the Thames. The other regional final was held at Cheltenham on the same weekend and the five clubs represented were all from the south-west with the sole exception of Bowdon. The All England has always been an awkward beast to manage, but unless some changes are made (perhaps a central venue for the final) it runs the risk of becoming more of a regional rather than, as the name implies, a truly national event.

The results on the big screen. Wins in green, losses in red (a t against the score is only shown for the winning score), and the scheduled games with lawn number and colours in grey).

© Wrest Park Croquet Club