Meadows West
This most flexible, informal and inclusive of Scottish croquet events, now in its fifth year, continued its evolution by drawing in a new group of participants, from the Glasgow Golf Croquet community, and diversifying into literary competition, as David Appleton offered a prize for the best 26-word story whose words began with the letters of the alphabet in order. Some of Sunday's players on the East side also took part in the Edinburgh Marathon in the morning (but as marshals, not as runners).
Saturday's games had been planned to involve seven players from the East and four from
the West, but a case was made for allowing Jackie Shannon to play for the West instead of
the East so as to make the numbers less unequal. (The exact nature of her
qualification to represent the West was unclear, but it was alleged that she had once
gone shopping in Glasgow.) With this change of allegiance there were six East players
and five West, and by the
inclusion of some two-against-one games they were all kept occupied throughout the
morning. One lawn was devoted to Association Croquet, involving four players in
double-banked singles games, and the other seven players had a succession of Golf Croquet
games with various permutations of partners and opponents on the other two lawns. In
view of the disparate handicaps of the players, all the games throughout the weekend were
played to handicap rules.
In the AC games, Duncan Reeves (West) played better than his handicap of 16 would suggest
to beat George Anderson (East, handicap 6) 26-0, and David Appleton (West, 3.5) had a much
narrower win over Tony Brightman (East, 5). The six GC games also went to the West,
with scores ranging from 7-1, for Jamieson Walker and Jackie Shannon against Fergus McInnes
and Ruth Munro, to the 7-5 that occurred in three of the games. In one of these,
Rod Williams, partnering Jackie against the same East pair, gave an impressive display
of accuracy when, with Fergus's ball in good position at hoop 2 and the rest still near
hoop 1, he nominated his next shot as a fine cut on the left of the distant ball and
achieved exactly that. The others making unavailing efforts for the East in these
games were Jola Jurasinska and Matthew Woodward.
Each Association game contributed two points to the match score, and each Golf
game counted for one point, and so the score was 10-0 in favour of the West when we paused
for lunch. This was prepared by Jamieson, with assistance from other
Meadows members, and featured chili con carne and its vegetarian counterpart chili
con Quorn, accompanied by rice and followed by oatcakes and "mousetrap" cheese (which
occasioned some discussion as to what mice actually preferred to eat).
In the afternoon the balance of the programme shifted from Golf to Association
Croquet, but the balance of the scores remained firmly to the West. Duncan kept up
his good form and beat Tony by an 18-point margin. Two games were played with
East pairs including novice AC players (Jola partnered by George, and Ruth by Fergus)
against singleton Westerners (respectively David and Rod). In the first of these
David performed a triple peel to win 26-11, while Rod had a much closer game against
Fergus and Ruth but emerged the winner by three points on time (18-15). In the
Golf Croquet Matthew achieved the East's only win of the match so far against Jackie.
Most players declined the games proposed for the last round of the day, but David took
on George at Association Croquet and won with another TP. The score at the end
of the day was East 1, West 20 - with 23 points at stake in Sunday's games, so that the
East could theoretically still win.
Sunday morning started inauspiciously with standing water on parts of the lawns after
heavy rain overnight. After a wait for the water in the hoop holes to drain away,
and the application of squeegees to remove the remaining puddles, four Association games
got going. Allan Hawke joined the squad for the East, and Ian Wright came in for
the West. The East's Golf Croquet players were on marathon duty from early morning,
but they got back about 10.30, along with Jamieson and Jackie of the West team, who then
took on the East's Alistair Ewing and Campbell Morrison. The first results of the
day provided much-needed encouragement to the East: Alistair and Campbell won their GC
7-6 to double the East's match score to 2, and Fergus then completed a 26-17 AC victory over
David to double it again. The other three Association games, however,
all went to the West, dashing any hopes the East might have had of turning the match around.
Before those games were finished, the Glasgow Golf Croquet contingent arrived: Margaret
Alcorn, Anne Docherty, Cathy Ferguson, Stewart Mill, Liz Urquhart and Stewart
Urquhart. Four of them took part in GC doubles games before lunch (when the number of
games was limited because two lawns still had Association games on), and all played in
the afternoon. Wins for the East in the pre-lunch games, by Jola Jurasinska and Brian
Cosford over Margaret and Stewart Mill and by Fiona Dow and Joe Henderson over Cathy and
Stewart Urquhart, brought the cumulative scores to 6 points for the East and 26 for the
West.
Lunch this time was provided by Charlotte Townsend and Ruth Munro, and included spaghetti
Bolognese (with a vegetarian alternative sauce as green as pond weed but much more
appetising, which Charlotte assured us did not contain any frogs to the best of her
knowledge) and salad and profiteroles. Well fed and watered (or wined), and cheered
by a renewed outbreak of sunshine, the players set to again for the afternoon, with
Association Croquet on one lawn and Golf Croquet on two lawns - all double-banked doubles,
so that 24 players in total had games simultaneously.
This time the East won five out of eight GC games, but in the AC games Duncan and Charlotte,
for the West, beat Tony and Campbell 26-8, and the other West pair of David and Ian just
held off Allan and Robert Inder for a 26-24 win, giving a final score of 33 points to the
West and 11 to the East. The trophy (won by the West in 2006) had not been located
for presentation, but the West of Scotland players departed happily enough, after a
sumptuous afternoon tea laid on by Vivien Wightman with help from Alison Ross. What
was presented was David's prize for the alphabetic story competition - a bottle of
wine, which would have been an alphabetically appropriate American Zinfandel if he had
managed to find any in the shop. This went to the manager and East captain
Fergus McInnes, for his account of the first day of the match:
A braw croquet day! East fought gallantly, however it just kept losing, meeting numerous on-form players, quick, ruthless, succumbing to unrelentingly victorious West's X-factor. Yield: zero!
[The author pointed out in a footnote that the exclamation mark at the end was mathematical notation for "factorial" and therefore made the statement accurate since 0 factorial is equal to 1. The prizegiver commented that he could have had another exclamation mark after it as punctuation.]
There was also a reverse alphabetical entry from Duncan Reeves, but no one rose to David's challenge of submitting an entry in verse.
Fergus McInnes
Results
(East names first)
Day One:
Association Croquet:
George Anderson (6) lost to Duncan Reeves (16) 0-26
Tony Brightman (5) lost to David Appleton (3.5) 24-26
Tony lost to Duncan 8-26
George & Jola Jurasinska (20) lost to David 11-26TP
Fergus McInnes (4.5) & Ruth Munro (20) lost to Rod Williams (2.5) 15-18
George lost to David 12-26TP
Golf Croquet:
Jola (2) & Ruth Munro (3) lost to Rod (1) 5-7
Fergus (1) & Matthew Woodward (3) lost to Jamieson Walker (1) & Jackie Shannon (4) 4-7
Jola & Matthew lost to Rod 4-7
Fergus & Ruth lost to Jamieson & Jackie 1-7
Jola & Matthew lost to Jamieson 5-7
Fergus & Ruth lost to Rod & Jackie 5-7
Matthew beat Jackie 7-5
Matthew lost to Jamieson 5-7
Jola lost to Jackie 3-7
Day Two:
Association Croquet:
George lost to Rod 12-26
Tony lost to Ian Wright (9) 21-26
Allan Hawke (7) lost to Duncan 17-26
Fergus beat David 26-17
Tony & Campbell Morrison (6) lost to Duncan & Charlotte Townsend (4.5) 8-26
Allan & Robert Inder (20) lost to David & Ian 24-26
Golf Croquet:
Alistair Ewing & Campbell (1) beat Jamieson & Jackie 7-6
Brian Cosford (1) & Jola beat Margaret Alcorn & Stewart Mill 7-2
Fiona & Joe Henderson beat Cathy Ferguson (4) & Stewart Urquhart 7-2
George & Fiona beat Anne Docherty (4) & Rod 7-6
Alistair & Ruth beat Margaret & Stewart Urquhart 7-5
Brian & Fergus lost to Cathy & Jamieson 4-7
Joe & Jola beat Liz Urquhart (4) & Stewart Mill 7-4
George & Ruth lost to Margaret & Jackie 4-7
Brian & Fergus beat Anne & Liz 7-1
Fiona & Alistair beat Cathy & Stewart Mill 7-5
Joe & Jola lost to Rod & Stewart Urquhart 0-7
Final scores:
East 11 (AC 2 + GC 9), West 33 (AC 22 + GC 11)
