End of season prizegiving

Having had to postpone the prizegiving due to bad weather, it took place after roll up on Tuesday 22nd October. Members were treated to a delicious cake made by Andrew Jackson accompanied by tea and coffee.

Mike kicked off the proceedings by presenting both Andrew Jackson and Hilary Bird with their recently awarded CqE Diplomas.

Andrea then made the following presentations ( some trophies some liquid!) to winners of the summer internal competitions:

AC:

Pat’s Plate – Ian Fugeman

Handicap Singles Knockout – Tim Dutton

Short Croquet League – Julie Tremble

GC:

Handicap league 7+ – Paul Stroud

Handicap league 6- – Graham Lamacraft

Level play league 6- – Peter Adams

EARS – Martin Birch

Level Singles Knockout – Jan Honeysett

JAWS – Jan Honeysett and Richard Perkins

Level Doubles Knockout – John Bryson and Iain Richardson

Amanda Bentley Cup (handicap playoff) – Graham Lamacraft

Croquet England Diploma awarded to Andrew Jackson and Hilary Bird

The Club is pleased to announce The Croquet England Diploma for 2024 has been awarded to 2 members, Andrew Jackson and Hilary Bird!

We congratulate both Andrew and Hilary on this achievement.

ANDREW JACKSON:

Andrew Jackson took up croquet at Guildford and Godalming in 2018. Since that time, he has exemplified the word ‘invaluable’. We really don’t know what we would do without him.

He is an enthusiastic GC player, competing typically in C-level tournaments with occasional forays towards B-level. He has represented the club on many occasions, particularly in the SECF/Croquet SE leagues. But his main, and huge, contribution has been off-court.

His jams and preserves have brought in funds for the club, and he is a frequent member of the tournament catering team. Seeing that we were relatively short of GC referees, Andrew qualified a couple of years ago and now regularly gives up weekend days to referee. That has helped managers of tournaments enormously. He is also very active in setting up lawns, erecting marquees and so forth when tournaments are run. Andrew is a keen and effective handyman. All clubs need one and Andrew has, over the years, played this role to perfection. If he becomes aware that a job needs doing, it’s as likely as not that he will have done it before anyone has asked him.

Over the past year or so the club has undertaken the major development of installing an irrigation system for all four lawns. It was a complicated project needing the coordination of club members, electricians, suppliers and contractors. That coordinating function was performed by Andrew, whose background is legal rather than construction – or engineering-related, and who had to operate outside his comfort zone. We take our hats off to him for what he achieved for the club.

We believe that all-round commitment of this nature is deserving of recognition, and we have no hesitation in proposing him for the award of a Croquet England Diploma.

HILARY BIRD:

Hilary Bird has been a member of Guildford and Godalming for some 10 years and a committee member for around 7 of them, serving as Secretary from 2017 to 2023. The club transformed from 4 lawns in a part of a field to 4 lawns in a separate, fenced-off, area with a simple clubhouse, opened in 2017. That made it possible to run more tournaments, mainly through the Croquet England Fixtures Calendar but also events hosted on behalf of Croquet England and the WCF.This transformation has, naturally, involved members in a huge amount of extra work and organisation, and Hilary has been at the centre of that. She took over responsibility for maintaining the clubhouse, together with organising and providing catering for tournaments and club matches.Hilary is active in GC, AC and short croquet, and is a keen promoter of SC as a stepping-stone from GC to AC. She manages GC teams in the jurisdiction of the SECF/Croquet SE and is the club’s representative on that body. Within the club, she was instrumental in the construction of a new website, took responsibility for liaison with our overarching organisation, serves as our safeguarding officer, and was responsible for the researching and procurement of club logo clothing.But it’s not just all those official things that Hilary is noted for – it’s all the unofficial tasks she volunteers for – hoop setting at 6 am, giving tournament competitors lifts to the station, helping to erect marquees, setting up lawns on tournament days, doing laundry for a visiting competitor (yes, really!) and so forth. There must, by now, be hundreds of people from outside the club who are aware of the huge contribution made by Hilary.

AC Team matches in August and September

We had mixed fortunes in our last three AC matches of the season; our two away SECF U-League fixtures against  Ealing and Sussex County and our return friendly match against Rother Valley at home.  Eight G&G players took part across the three matches with all bar one contributing to at least one win. 

We had a narrow loss to Ealing by 4 games to 3, thanks to Simon Tuke of Ealing completing a 10 hoop break after time was called to win his game against Peter.  Against Sussex County the only game we won was the doubles, but two games were lost by a single point on time, so on another day the result could have looked very different.  Against Rother Valley it was G&G’s turn to be  convincing winners by 6 games to 1.  The last game to finish was very close with Julie holding her nerve to making the winning hoop after the scores were level when time was called. 

We received excellent hospitality from both Ealing and Sussex County who both provided a substantial lunch. 

Final GC Team B match is a win!

We drove to Rother Valley on 27/8 knowing it was going to be hot – it was – 28 degrees!

The “velvet cushion” lawns took a bit of getting used to, nevertheless, after round 1, the doubles round, we were 2-0 up.

Round 2 singles was a different matter, and we took a hammering with only Peter managing a win against former GGCC player Chris Stiff (who gallantly stepped into the breach for RV at the last minute).

So we went into round 3 with all to play for, the game score being 3 all. Happily we managed to win all three games, resulting in an overall score of 6-3 to GGCC.

Many thanks to Martin Birch for agreeing, on the morning, to play for us. He, Peter Adams, Phil Tremble and Hilary Bird were the team.

A most satisfactory end to the league season!

GC C Level Tournament

Glorious weather – we were so lucky! 16 players from clubs around the southeast ( and one intrepid player from Hunstanton) met to play the GC C level tournament.

The morning format comprised four blocks each of four payers in an all-play-all format. Many closely fought ties found the two winners from each block to go forward to the main knock out event while the two lower players entered the Plate knockout.

There was a short break for a superb lunch provided by Andrew and Wendy Lockwood before it was all systems go with the two knockouts competitions.

In the competition for the Plate Margaret Page and Andrew Jackson both had convincing wins against their opponents while Ian Prince and Philip Hendy had to work harder to progress to the semi finals of the Plate competition.

In the main event Gary Lewis and Iain Richardson had fairly straightforward games to take them through to the next round. Meanwhile Helen Lucas and Nicholas Barton faced stiffer opposition with each of their matches going to the golden hoop. Gary then beat Helen to set up the match against Iain who had a close match with Nicholas to win through to the final.

In the semi finals of the Plate Ian Prince and Philip Henry were both winners leading to an exciting final, with Philip finding that extra something to be the winner beating Ian 7-2.

The main knockout was a tense contest between Gary and Iain which belies the end score. After much fighting for position and many successful clearances Iain fought through to beat Gary 7-4.

Congratulations to all the competitors for a great day of croquet and many thanks to the ‘backroom staff’ of GGCC members Andrew, Wendy, Mike and Hilary for all their hard work in making such a successful tournament .

Andrea Huxley, Manager

R league Match v Sussex

Guildford and Godalming beat Sussex County 4-3 on 2 August 2024
A warm and humid day for this match between two teams that knew each other well. The two singles matches resulted in one win for each team, both only requiring two games for a result. The doubles match was fiercely contested, with Julie and John eventually winning against Vincent and David in three close games and so GGCC took a slender 2-1 lead into the afternoon singles.

In the afternoon singles Vincent and David got their own backs, beating Julie and John. With a win for Hilary the match was finely poised at 3 games a piece and the outcome would be determined by the result of the match between Laki and Janet. Laki won the first game but Jan dug deep and managed to win the next two games to take the game and win the match for GGCC by the narrowest of margins. Janet was the star of the day for GGCC winning both her matches but pleasingly, all members contributed a point.

The teams were Guildford and Godalming: Julie Tremble, John Gosden, Janet Honeysett and Hilary Bird
Sussex County: Vincent L’Estrange, David King, Laki Marangos and Rosemary Faulkner.

GC R League away to Ealing 8/7

Better late than never…….in the past 3 weeks GGCC teams have clearly been very busy, judging from the 7 match reports preceding this one!

John Gosden, Phil Tremble, Peter Adams, and High-Handicapper-Hilary, made up the team to play Ealing in the CSE league.

We had a lengthy journey thanks to road closures, maintenance and ordinary rush hour traffic. However, we arrived with time to spare, relaxed and hydrated by a pit stop at Costa.

In the morning John and Phil had a tough match against Tony Elliot and David Graham . In the third game time was declared, and the Ealing pair won 6-5. Meanwhile Peter had a convincing win over Margaret Page, and Hilary a surprising win over Emma Bowden-Doherty.

After a very nice lunch the singles rounds commenced, with GGCC winning 3 out of 4, meaning that we had won the match 5-2.

A satisfactory result!

In the sweltering heat of Lodsworth

It was already warm when half of Team A arrived for our away fixture with Lodsworth in the CSE Handicap League. Due to Lodsworth only having one lawn the format of the fixture was a little different from the usual. Douglas and Andrew started off with doubles against Mike and Elaine Wilson and took time to get into their swing on an unfamiliar lawn losing 4-7. However, in the return singles matches both won tight games giving GGCC a 2-1 lead, as we broke for a sandwich lunch kindly provided by Lodsworth. Many thanks for that. After lunch, we went into the doubles proper with Peter Gill and Douglas coming out on top but Andrew and Vernon losing. So going into the final two rounds of singles, GGCC were still one game ahead and the competition and the temperature were hotting up. In the first set of singles Vernon prevailed but Peter was narrowly beaten. So with all to play for, the final singles began. Here Peter Gill with some excellent jump shots won the game against Peter Hill giving GGCC the match but Vernon was still fighting a close battle against John West. It all came down to the golden hoop which unfortunately went John’s way. Vernon is probably still muttering about his final shot that didn’t go the way he intended.

GGCC won the match by 5-4 after some very close games in a beautiful setting. Many thanks to all at Lodsworth for their hospitality and team spirit and to Team A for battling through.

Andrew Lockwood

31 July 2024

Longman cup quarterfinal against East Dorset 30th July

.After a 7am start and a long journey to East Dorset CC the G&G AC team faced a very stiff test in the Longman Cup quarter-final against the runner-up in both of the last two years. In the doubles John Gosden was not on form, missing several medium-distance roquets, but Julie Tremble kept us in the game with several good hits-in and roll approaches.  We were level around 30 minutes before the end, but judicious use of their single bisque gave our opponents the victory by 4 on time.  Bernie Phillips had a very tight game and just managed to scrape a victory by 1 in the final turn after time had been called with a roll approach from 20 yards and a successful long hoop.  The fourth member of our team, Tim Dutton, lost his game meaning we were 2-1 down at lunch.  We were provided with a lovely fishcakes, chips and salad ‘light’ lunch by our hosts.  The afternoon was very hot, approaching 30 degrees, as we got underway with the four singles matches.  Tim fought hard creating chances to catch up with his opponent who had both balls on the peg for around 40 minutes before Tim finally succumbed.  Julie had an early strong lead, but her opponent used his bisques to almost catch-up, however she then forged further ahead to peg out and win.  Meanwhile Bernie could not overcome a very strong opponent, who had won the C Level AC tournament at G&G in June.  John battled away but eventually lost on time, making the final result 5-2 to East Dorset.    

GC Team B v Compton B

Team B, comprising Janet Curtecka, David Boyd, Martin Birch and Richard Perkins, welcomed Compton B, on a mainly sunny afternoon on Friday 26th July, for our 3rd match in the CSE Advantage Handicap League.

With handicaps in our team ranging from -1 to 10, and theirs from 4 to 12, it promised to be an interesting event, with some challenging starting scores.

After round 1, the doubles round, the score was 1 all. We went into round 2, the singles round, with some trepidation, and finished 2-4 down. So it was all to play for in round 3, one doubles and two singles. We needed a win in all three games to win the match ……no pressure!

The team responded magnificently, and in three hard fought games, two of which were “which way is it going to go seven-sixers?” , managed to secure a 5-4 win, graciously accepted by Compton (who had a nasty journey home ahead of them).

Well done all.