CROQUET NEWS:  Croquet — Is it Just Chess with Balls?

12 September 2007
Mildura, Victoria, AU
by Prue Bentley in Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Sydney, New South Wales, AU

Colourful croquet balls light up the green.

Ever made a roquet after a rush? How about a jump-shot or a push? These are all terms from a game that was immortalised in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland — croquet.

And while you might think it’s a very genteel sport, on the green it’s no holds barred.

Rona Lemon has been playing the game for fifteen years, she says the sport isn’t very well known – you just have to try to buy a mallet to see that. “You can’t buy any locally,” she says, “they just stare at you and say, croquet, what’s that?”

The perception of the game she says is that “it’s just a mob of old people hitting a ball through a hoop and it’s not. It’s a very, very challenging game.”

The players liken croquet to snooker or chess. Max plays with the Mildura team most weeks, he says, “you’ve got to plan your moves ahead and also like snooker, [it’s about] getting your angles.”

President of the Mildura Croquet Club, Aileen Duncan, started playing when she retired, mostly so that she didn’t have to play bowls because she laughs, “My parents ate, drank and slept it, when I was a child!”

	Max and Joy practise their shots on the green.

Croquet is all about outwitting your opponent by laying the balls to your advantage and making sure theirs are separated. Each player has two balls each for the game and these are played in various ways or ‘shots’ to move around the field and position yourself to each of the hoops.

So if you manage to get to the hoops, you then have to get your ball through them and this isn’t easy as they are quite narrow. They are also getting a bit of a battering because of the dry conditions.

Football fields aren’t the only ones suffering from the drought as Rona explains, “Every time we put the hoops in we’ve got to bore down with a drill because the ground is so hard they just won’t go down and they’re getting wider and wider and the hoops are getting bashed.”

The ground is also a lot less smooth to play on because water restrictions mean it cannot be watered. This affects the game says Rona, “Just a little bunch of clover, if your ball’s going over it, it can completely veer it off.”

For a novice, the game might seem a little bewildering. “It does take time to judge your distances,” explains Aileen, “how much pace you need behind the mallet. And of course it takes a while to learn what stroke you should be doing to get where you want to go.”

There are a lot of rules and strange croquet terms, not to mention the finer points of the strategy. For the members of the Mildura Croquet Club though, it’s worth it for the work out it gives both body and mind. You could say it’s ‘chess with balls’.

Rona Lemon gets the hoop shot.

Rona Lemon sums it up this way, ‘When I retired from work I thought I’d go and play bowls and someone said to me, ‘Oh don’t play bowls, anyone can play bowls. Play croquet it’s a much more challenging game!’”

If you’d like to find out more about croquet, the club meet at 1pm on Tuesdays and 1.30pm on Saturdays at Mansell Reserve in Mildura newcomers are always welcome.