GC All England Handicap final
10-11 September

The GC All England handicap is run on the same lines as the AC event: each club that enters runs a preliminary competition, the winners go through to an area final and those best placed in the area finals then contest the national final. Wrest Park had applied to host the national final and was successful, but at that point had not entered the competition.

It was felt that if we were to host the event we should at least enter it, so a one-day preliminary event was held earlier in the season and as a result of this Gill Brewer and Terry Collis found themselves playing in the final. Both Gill and Terry got onto the podium, but Gill was denied the top step after Roger Goldring won his last game by the minimum margin.

The final was managed by Richard Keighley and Ross Bagni. The full results are available on the CroquetScores website. Thanks to all who helped, including Terry (mowing), Ross (white lines) and Gill (baking).

report and photo by Ross Bagni

The day started with a minutes silence to pay our respects to the Queen, our long standing patron.

Play (all play all) started under a cloudy sky and the morning’s play seemed to go in favour of the higher handicapped players – this continued with few exceptions, one being Jason Carley (Watford, -3), who was the only player undefeated at the end of the day with seven wins.

He was closely followed by the defending champion Roger Goldring (Phyllis Court, 1), Terry Collis (Wrest Park, 3), Gill Brewer (Wrest Park, 8) and Charles Briggs (Caversham, 8) who were all on six wins.

With seven rounds played on Saturday, Sunday would leave six rounds to play. In the morning session Marion Button (Caversham & Peasedown, 6), Carol Wadsworth (Phyllis Court, 12) and John Horne (Cheam, 3) all had perfect mornings. Terry Collis carried on winning with just one loss. Jason Carley found that the number of extra shots for his opponents was just too much and lost three out of four. Roger Goldring was having a bit of an up and down time.

Come the last three rounds it was very even and by the last round we had Gill Brewer on eight wins with a better hoops difference than Terry Collis who had nine wins.

Gill Brewer won her last game while Terry Collis lost his, leaving Gill in provisional first place, an excellent performance, having only started playing GC last October.

It all came down to the game between Roger Goldring, also on nine wins, and Ron Gould (Ryde, 9). Roger eventually won 7-6 to finish with ten wins and retain the title. CA President Quiller Barrett presented the trophy.

Quiller Barrett with
winner Roger Goldring

Club

Croquet

Wrest Park

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