Today Karen, Adam and I represented Bromley in the Sussex Short Croquet Jamboree held at Southwick.
Eight teams took part, Sussex A, Sussex B, Rottingdean, Rother Valley, Hove Beach, Littlehampton, Chichester and Team Bromley.
When I saw the players for each team last night I thought we were going to be in for a very tough day with some very good AC players.
For those who don't know, Short Croquet is a shorter form of AC and only played on half a lawn as apposed to a full lawn, you only go through the hoops once instead of twice and unless you are really good you all get bisques (extra turns). Plus instead of lasting over three hours for a game of AC, Short Croquet is timed to 75 minutes for singles and 90 minutes for doubles (well today's event was).
The format was a mixture of singles and doubles played over four rounds.
After round three Chichester were leading with 12 points, Sussex B were second with 11 points, Bromley were sitting third on 10 points.
So the final round was a singles game and one doubles. The captain being a fair man asked who wanted to play what game.
Well, the singles meant playing a GC player with a minus 2 GC handicap and with 7 bisques in this format, he doesn't play much AC . If you know AC you will know that even on full lawn game of AC 7 bisques is a lot to play with . Anyway it was agreed I would take one for the team .
We started, he went around with his first ball using one bisque, I followed around with my first ball using 2 bisques, he then went round with his second ball using all of his remaining 6 bisques, game won. At the start we both agreed we both had to many bisques, so I suggested playing level play but for some reason he turned me down, I wonder why .
It was over to Team Newbould's in the doubles, who hammered Sussex B 14-2, this win took us to the top of the league. We were now hoping for a shock win for Sussex A (they hadn't won many) over Chichester, surely they couldn't do it!!!!
With the time up, Sussex A managed to hold onto a 9-6 victory.
Team Bromley had won the 2024 Sussex Jamboree .
Special mention to Karen who won all her games. Good luck playing her in our AC internal competitions .
In total we won four, drew one and lost two.
Cheers to Karen and Adam for a great days play.
Watch this space as Short Croquet will be coming to our lawn soon.
I've attached a photo of the trophy ceremony, which was a Sussex County Croquet Club Pen
Thanks
Martin
On Wednesday 10th July a team of six from Bromley travelled to Southwick to take part in the Ladies Day competition. In total 14 clubs took part. We each played two singles and two doubles games throughout the day. With quite a differing range of handicaps across all the clubs we found ourselves giving away a number of extra shots in most games.
The morning saw us getting off to a slow start and we lost rounds one and two. However we picked up and drew round three, unfortunately lost four, but went on to win rounds five and six. An enjoyable day was had by us all. Well done to the team - Kathy, Sue Stanley, Valerie, Wendy, Ruth, Caroline. Our position overall was ninth.
Caroline
Updated: Aug 27
16th July | BROMLEY | 5 | DULWICH | 2 |
29th July | BROMLEY | 5 | CANTERBURY | 2 |
8th August | SUSSEX COUNTY B | 4 | BROMLEY | 3 |
24th August | RAMSGATE | 2 | BROMLEY | 5 |