CROQUET NEWS:  Croquet Nuts

16 June 2006
Brighton and Eastbourne, England, UK
in Sidmouth Herald, Sidmouth, England, UK

Unbeatable John Toye.

The Bank Holiday weekend saw 150 top croquet players from 22 counties converge for the 2006 Inter-Counties croquet tournament.

Two Sidmouth members were among the six Devon County players: Jonathan Coombs (Sidmouth), John Toye (Sidmouth and Budleigh), Cliff Jones (Budleigh), Brian Wainman (Plymouth), Ken Wood (Budleigh), and Alan Newman (Plymouth).

Brian and Ken had been chosen for the first time and were warmly welcomed into the team following the sad decision of Brian Smith and Tony Dustan-Smith not to join us this year. (John Prescott was unfortunately unavailable, claiming that he had a country to run.)

The competition is held at the two venues of Brighton and Eastbourne; play was of a very high standard, with triple peels and even sextuple peels being carried out.

One player, incredibly, managed a straight quintuple peel, putting his partner ball through its last five hoops at the same time as making them with his own ball. The Devon team managed one triple peel, courtesy of John Toye.

Success followed the team throughout the first three days and on the last day the team were standing second in the table with just two matches remaining. Unfortunately, these were both narrowly lost and the chance of promotion disappeared.

Nevertheless, it was unquestionably the most successful result gained by the team to date. Apart from the croquet, there was the pleasure of meeting up with old friends who were last seen at Inter-Counties last year and won't be seen again until next year.

This was in evidence in particular with the teams representing Northern Counties, who took over a pub each evening; the strains of "Ilkla Moor Baht 'at" could be heard far away until the early hours of the morning.

The coming week sums up the scope of playing and social events at Sidmouth Croquet Club: the regular golf croquet sessions and club afternoon are complemented by the sparkling wine evening, starting at 4pm today, Friday, (Lawns 2, 3 and 4); the following day sees the one-day Egyptian tournament for the Canton Trophy.

On Sunday, all lawns will be closed for preparation and hoop-setting for the June Open Tournament which runs 19 - 24.

By the way, Sidmouth members who attended the Men's and Women's Championships this weekend were amused to see the Mini Cooper of Welsh international Chris Williams whose registration plate spells CRO3UET. Croquet players obsessive? Never!!

Apologies to all those who were left in the dark about the result of the Dorothy Toye final due to the omission of a paragraph in last week's paper.

John Toye simply took his ball all the way round, peeled his front ball through rover and pegged out to win +9 with a score of 14-5.

Congratulations to John and thanks to club president Iris Dwerryhouse who presented the trophy to him.

As for Ian Friedlander, he had done very well to keep John at bay for 40 minutes - an achievement in itself - but was the bridesmaid for the third successive time. Maybe next year, Ian?