| Kington Langley Croquet Club Newsletter – June 2025 |
GC High handicap League (North East) – The High Handicap team played 2 matches in May.
On 8th May, the team was in Bath. Despite the cold and wind, the team was always in contention, so everything turned on the final round. As the results came in, it became apparent that the outcome of the match would be decided by the result of the final match being played. The result was 5-5 draw; however under the (new) Advantage handicap rules, if a game is stopped at a time limit, the contestant with the highest percentage of hoops wins the match – in this case Graham wins. The overall score was 10.5 to KLCC and 9.5 to Bath.
On 23 May the team travelled to Swindon. This match had no time limits; Swindon have 3 lawns, so if one match was taking a long time, there was usually a space on another lawn to start the next round. Overall, KLCC won the match 14-6. The majority of the games were hard fought, and for several of the Swindon team, this was the first or almost the first time they had played in a league match.
The next match is at home to Bradford on Avon on 26th June.
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Short Croquet League (North) – After the leagues were finalised and dates agreed for matches Bristol withdrew a team leaving the North League short so it was decided we had enough players to put in a second team to replace Bristol. Unfortunately our two teams are in the same league and will have to play each other, in normal circumstances this would have been played first.
Our ‘B’ team played their first match at Blewbury on 22nd May, it was a close match and ended with a draw, 8 games each.
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Longman Cup – The club entered this National Croquet England competition for the third year running. In the first round we were drawn against Blewbury so on Friday 16th May we welcomed Blewbury to the club for the first time. John told the team we needed to win 2 of the 3 morning games if we were to stand a chance of winning. By lunchtime we were 2-1 up, and by the end of play in the afternoon we had won 5-2.
On the 25th June a team of 4 will travel to Henley-on-Thames to play Phyllis Court in the next round.