Category: News

Unfortunately the lawns are waterlogged so no play today

Our journey in the Murphy Shield was a short one this year as we lost a very tight match against Belsay 4-3, only losing in a third and decisive game in the doubles.

Many thanks to Derek Barron, Nigel Martin, Roger Carpenter, and William Steadman who represented us, and best wishes to Belsay who play Pendle in the next round.

We had a comfortable Division 1 victory over Tyneside Hunters on 7 May, winning 17-1. Many thanks to our opponents for a friendly and sociable day, and to our team of Roger Carpenter, Tony McCann , Nigel Martin, and Peter Tymms

The next home match will be on Saturday 7 May, when Durham Bede play Tyneside Hunters at Chester-le-Street in the Croquet North GC League First Division.

Again this means that normal roll-up play will not be possible, but spectators are of course welcome.

The first league match of the 2022 season saw the Durham Cuthbert of George Cansino, Renee Copeland, Susan Martin, and Kathleen Penrose losing to Alnmouth Green 6-12 on Saturday 30 April.

Thus was the first match using the new Advantage handicap system, where instead of the higher handicap player having possible extra bisque shots, the two players have different targets for the number of hoops they have to make to win the game. Generally speaking the system seemed to work well, and there were only a couple of occasions where more complicated maths came into play when a game failed to complete within the time limit.

The weather kept fine for the day and the Alnmout players complimented s on the quality (and flatness) of our lawns.

The first home league match is against Alnmouth Greens on Saturday 30 April, which means that there will be no normal roll-up play that day. Spectators are, of course, welcome to come and cheer on our players.

We are please to announce that the 2022 season will start from Monday 18 April (Easter Monday). We look forward to welcoming old friends and new.

Our team of Derek Barron, Tony McCann, Kathleen Penrose and Peter Tymms lost 7-11 to Bamburgh in the play-off at Belsay for overall CN League Champions for 2021, in a close match where several games went to the golden hoop.

Good luck to Bamburgh in next season’s Federation Shield where they will represent Croquet North.

Our team of Roger Carpenter, Tony McCann, Nigel Martin and Dave Parsons, travelled to Nottingham to play Watford on the 7 September in the semi-final of the Murphy Shield.

In a close match we won the morning doubles but lost the two singles, leaving us 1-2 down at lunch time. The afternoon was finely balanced with both teams winning 2 matches even though three of our four losing games in the afternoon went to the golden hoop.

In the end Watford prevailed 4-3 to progress to the final against Hurlingham. We wish them well.

Tony McCann rounded off an excellent year by winning the final of the Croquet Association Golf Croquet B-level competition held at Eastbourne over the weekend of 4-5 September.

The competition consists os a number of events held around the country for players with handicaps 3 or higher. Having won (more than) one of these, Tony was automatically in the final which consisted of 16 players in an all-play-all format.

In the end, Tony won 13 of his 15 matches and finished well ahead of the field. Many congratulations to him for his successful year.

Unfortunately, Tony will be unable to defend his title next year as his success has lowered his handicap to 1.