Newcastle National Park Croquet Club’s Association Carnival went ahead with 14 entrants playing 1 day of doubles and 2½ of singles. I will explain how I fitted 5 games each for this number below.

We started with a day of individual doubles, random draw with all players playing 3 shortened games with 3 different partners against 6 different opponents, modified handicap with a pointscore system for results.

This was won by Steve Harden from Tamworth; second Jim Hicks, Port Macquarie; third Fred Harvey, Maitland and 4th Ben Durie from Toronto.

In the singles, the top 4 players were in an advanced block (Spades). This was dominated by Steve Harden, who went to a new handicap of 0. Second was the rapidly improving Stephen Howes who started well in the final but was overhauled by the relentless roqueting and control of Steve.

Hearts block looked like going to Pam Durie (Toronto) until the last few minutes of the final but Bill Munns (Toronto) pulled of a series of great shots to get home by a golden point after the bell. A pity for Pam who was our only lady winner, but Bill is improving and followed up his block win at Toronto.

Diamonds went to another Toronto fast improver, Glen Coulton, who won 5/5 and was promoted to 11 handicap. Our sole Newcastle member to win a prize was Peter Waymouth, who won 3 games.

The format was a little tricky with 14 entrants:

To provide 5 games for 4 players, I ran 3 games in round robin then semifinals and a 1 game final with playoff for 3rd & 4th ("world cup" format).

The downside of this is that a player could lose the first 3 games and still win the block but the results turned out fair.

The same format was used for block 2, Hearts, but this was advanced handicap. The remaining 6 players were in a handicap (adv) round robin, diamonds block.

Maybe it was just the perfect weather but everyone seemed cheerful and seemed to enjoy the event. Come along next year: maybe we can get 15 players next time!

Larry Bryant
Manager