Match report - Wingrave vs. HW Kites 15 June

This was an interesting start: turning up at your home ground to be welcomed by your Visitors, as technically this was Wingrave’s “home” fixture, but with only one lawn at their club they elected to play at Wycombe.

Meanwhile Raouf and Keith were busily resetting the hoops. Since our lawns are currently unusually dry and hard, the net result was hoops set at barely a 1/16th that were very uncharacteristically rock solid, and thus extremely testing to run! This caused some consternation for both teams, as despite us telling Wingrave “oh they will loosen-up very quickly in our soil; they always do”, they didn’t!

But we are croquet players, so we all just got on with it…. At least the weather was glorious, hot sunshine and no wind all day.

Kites made a confident start in the first round, leading 3-1 at the end of it. By the halfway mark, (and lunch time, always a highlight), this had stretched to 6-2, and we were coasting …
Then Wingrave started a fight back, winning 3 out of 4 in round 3, to take the score to 7 – 5. If they could repeat this in the last round they would secure a draw, (ooh – exciting!!).

The last round is always has close matches anyway, as teams play off in strict handicap order, i.e. H1 vs A1, H2 vs. A2, etc., so the games tend to be close. In the event Kites ran out 3 – 1 winners, so the final result on the big-croquet-scoreboard-in-the-sky will show:
                                       High Wycombe Kites                 10        Wingrave          6

All in all a lovely day’s croquet played in super weather, against opponents from another club and in a most convivial and friendly atmosphere.
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It was a splendid advert for the SCF league competitions.

​Geoff Johnson