[words by Martin Emmett]
Sunday the 4th of August saw Chichester and Fishbourne enter the Carnival Day at the Sussex County Croquet Club, the host of many major international croquet events over the years. In fact, we entered two teams; “Fish and Chips and “More Fish and Chips”, the names being derivatives of FISHbourne and CHIchester.
The whole event was quite relaxed, and many teams had good fancy dress outfits to go with their names – Hove Beach Boys and Lodsworth Hillbillies were perhaps the best. We were more subdued but did have good “I like fish and chips” badges.
The teams consisted of John Effingham, David Milne, Sally Short and me (F&C) and Ann Milne, Chris Fuller and Mike Pudney (More F&C). Unfortunately, Keith Burt, who was due to play, had to withdraw at the last minute, but other CFCC players took his place for his various games. David had just flown back from the USA, where he had been ill, and was still feeling unwell, but thankfully turned out for us despite this, and presumably experiencing jet lag, too.
The tournament was handicapped with extra shots given for the higher handicapped players. This worked well with many close games, and in the doubles games in the morning we enjoyed some good victories. Although David and I didn’t manage to use our extra shots well enough to overcome a Hove Beach Boys pairing including a -2 handicapped player, we gave then a good game – and there’s hope for us all, because even -2 players make mistakes.
The lawns, as you might imagine, were a pleasure to play on, with flatness being the order of the day. Although, despite the smart hoops being high quality and silver, they seemed narrow, and the scoring angle was narrower than we were used to. The seagulls were very forward, too, often walking across the lawns during play, and even occasionally trying to remove the score marker pegs on the hoops.
The singles events in the afternoon, as in the morning, saw mixed results for us, although we achieved a number of pleasing wins, including Sally’s victory over Tudor, the same -2 player who had beaten David and me in the morning.
At the time of writing, I don’t have access to the full results, but we had some good results during the day. We weren’t amongst the winners- with Hove Beach CC winning both the singles and doubles events.
As there were 13 teams of four players on 7 lawns, this was not an easy competition to organise, and it ran smoothly over the course of the day, thank you to the Southwick Club and also to John Effingham who had to cope with not only soring out teams and entries, but also coping with a number of late changes to available personnel for the CFCC teams.
It was a very enjoyable day, backed up with some very nice food and drink, lovely surroundings, friendly but difficult opponents and beautiful weather.
The Magnificent Seven: Chris, Martin, Ann, David, Sally, John and Mike