Scottish Croquet Association

Wilkinson Sword 2023

5 August 2023, Knightswood

There were teams from Aberdeen, Auchincruive, Glasgow and Meadows for this annual tournament, held at Knightswood in Glasgow. All arrived on time despite real and ficticious road closures due to the UCI world cycling championships. We were fortunate that Storm Antoni headed across England, and Glasgow escaped relatively unscathed, with just a few afternoon showers.

Aberdeen’s first game was against Auchincruive, and it was agreed to play Alternate Stroke Doubles (this ended up being the only match of the tournament to use ASD). Aberdeen took their first ball all the way to the peg and Auchincruive did likewise, aided by Kevin spectacularly running 2-back from near 1-back. Their plan was to peg out the Aberdeen ball, but after that wasn’t possible, Aberdeen turned the tables and pegged out the Auchincruive ball, leaving two balls against one, which allowed Aberdeen to complete a 18-13 win.

Aberdeen’s second game was against Meadows using traditional doubles. Bill was able to get his red ball to penult in a few turns, then John took yellow round and attempted a straight double peel. He successfully peeled red through penult and rover but unfortunately hit red prematurely after going through rover with yellow, so the peg-out couldn't be completed. Bill finished the game next turn after the opponents couldn't hit in, and it was 18-6 to Aberdeen.

In the third game against Glasgow, John took black to penult but stopped as he was concerned about being peeled through rover and being pegged out. There were several short breaks thereafter, and Bill got blue to rover. He then looked at the scores and worked out that Aberdeen would win the trophy whatever happened after that. John had a couple of failed attempts to finish the game early. A brilliant cut-rush from corner II to penult was followed by an overhit hoop approach. Also an attempt at "precision croquet" failed to live up to its name as John went off the lawn in attempting to get behind a corner ball. This allowed Glasgow to come back to win, Steve finishing off with a 5-yard peg out, the final score being 18-13.

Overall Aberdeen made a total of 49 hoops norrowly beating Glasgow who scored 47.

Report by John Owen

Results

Round 1
ACCC 18 - Auchincruive 13
MCC 18 - GCC 15

Round 2
ACCC 18 - MCC 6
GCC 14 - Auchincruive 12

Round 3
GCC 18 - ACCC 13
Auchincruive 13 - MCC 7

Brian Durward Manager