It seems amazing, but the season is drawing to a close; another two to three months of play, but the tournaments are winding down, and only the Sidmouth Club grand finale day on the 29th September largely remains, writes Richard Thurlow.

If I am to continue the croquet news, I will have to start padding it out with other stuff such as; ‘Can Donald Trump be encouraged to take up croquet’, or perhaps ‘How will Brexit affect the lawns in Sidmouth?’.. No doubt you will be anxious to read such items of interest.

Anyway, on to our last few results.

On the first day of August the SE Golf Croquet team were hosts to five members of a team from Dowlish Wake.

Sidmouth intended to field a team of six, but unfortunately, one of our team fell off his electric bicycle on his way to the ground and was unable to play (he certainly reached the ground sooner than he had intended…).

By lunchtime four doubles and six singles games had been played and Sidmouth led five-and-a-half to four-and-a-half.

That left 10 singles games to be played in three sessions. After eight of these games, with only the final two remaining, the visitors had gone into a nine-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half lead.

To win, Sidmouth had to pin their hopes on John Maynard and Anne Reece to succeed.

Anne, playing well against the more experienced Dowlish Wake captain, lost 7-3. John, however, won his game 7-4.

Paul Bradley, our new star, excelled, winning three, and drawing one! Graeme Pryor, won three of his four games.

The last AC Federation game was played in almost continuous drizzle last Saturday at Budleigh, (it is almost a forgotten experience to play in the dry these days.)

While the cricket team waited for the weather to improve the croquet team carried on regardless wondering when the drizzle would stop.

During the morning, Mike Taylor and Ian Friedlander took the allocated three hours to beat the Budleigh partnership of Alan Rush and Tim Liles 26-17.

Sam Watts (Budleigh) played swiftly and confidently to beat David Clarke (Sidmouth) 26-14 in quick time.

Andrew Thomas (Sidmouth) played carefully to beat Wendy Dominguez (Budleigh) 26-11.

The cricket match was duly abandoned, but the croquet players continued with four singles games in the afternoon during which time Sidmouth won three of the afternoon games with Mike, David and Andrew winning their games.

That all led to an overall match score of 5-2 in favour of Sidmouth and the victory left the team finishing third in the league.