Sidmouth Herald published 5 May 2018
Sidmouth Croquet Club (SCC) play Budleigh Croquet Club biannually, for the sought-after Seagull Trophy, a wooden replica bird that for some reason the clubs battle over for the honour of keeping it on their shelves, writes Richard Thurlow.
Sidmouth won it in spring 2017, drew with Budleigh to retain it in the autumn, and were hoping to do so again in the match played last week.
The morning’s games were played in harsh winds at Budleigh; in fact so cold that a male member of the Sidmouth team, unprepared and in an effort to keep warm, had to wear a ladies’ jacket far too small for him which rather hampered his game. He did look good in it though.
Six games were played, including one doubles, and at the end of the morning session SCC were one game down, at 3-4.
The afternoon, which had been promised to be even colder, was actually quite benign, and we hoped our results would improve accordingly.
They did, with SCC winning seven of the eight games played. The overall result was thus 10-5 to Sidmouth, which will enable us to keep the bird for another six months.
Sidmouth Croquet Club were hosts to a team from Exeter in the first SW Federation Golf Croquet Level Play League fixture of this season.
The Sidmouth team got off to an encouraging start by winning three of the four doubles games.
With 16 singles games to play, however, events changed dramatically in favour of Exeter.
Despite a strong performance from Steve Pearson, who won all his three singles games, Sidmouth managed to win only four of the singles while Exeter won 12 and this all left the final score being 13-7 in favour of Exeter.