2020-02-02

Players the winners in GC Presidents Eights

The Melbourne weather proved the real hit! And a hit it was - Friday is over-bearing heat, Saturday is pouring rain and Sunday is resplendent Melbourne Summer.  

We had it all and we still managed to finish by mid Sunday afternoon.

And for this I must thank the players.  

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2020-01-27

Battle for Victorian GC Singles Championship

The VCA Open Singles Championship for 2020 was held over 26 and 27 January and saw twenty-eight fierce competitors don their croquet armour and storm the battlefield that is the gentle green courts of the Victorian Croquet Centre at Cairnlea.

Some of our players had braved both the Australia Day Tournament and the Doubles in the days previous, so it was really great to see so many people enjoying their croquet for such an extended period. It was lovely to see so many people enjoying the friendship and camaraderie that is forged through meeting each other on the lawns.

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Bryan Dawson admitted to Croquet Hall of Fame

The 2020 inductee to the World Croquet Federation Hall of Fame is Australian Bryan Dawson.

During the Opening Ceremony of the WCF Association Croquet World Championship, on 14 February, WCF President Ian Burridge of Wales presented Bryan with a certificate commemorating his induction. 

The citation supporting Bryan's induction to the Hall of Fame read as follows:

Bryan Dawson is a resident of Adelaide, South Australia and played Association Croquet competitively from 1988 to 2013. He made regular appearances in the Australian Men’s and Open Championships from the start of his career to the early 2000s, and was a stalwart of the South Australian Interstate Team from 1991 to 2011. In 1999, he travelled to the USA to play in the Sonoma-Cutrer and Resort at the Mountain events and, in 2000, represented Australia in the MacRobertson Shield in New Zealand as well as making a second appearance at Sonoma-Cutrer.

However, Bryan made his major contribution to the game of croquet as the maker of the eponymous Dawson Ball, the premier competition croquet ball for over 25 years from the early 1990s. In his Adelaide workshop, he undertook years of painstaking research into the precise mix of plastics and colours required for the cold moulding process that would produce a croquet ball that met the official specifications reliably by being perfectly round, robust enough to withstand years of vigorous use and almost totally resilient to temperature changes.

Given these characteristics, the ball that steadily took centre stage in almost every croquet-playing country in the world was the Dawson Ball.

The only exception was in Egypt which had been self-sufficient in ball-making for decades.  The Egyptian Croquet Federation recognised that it made sense to use Dawson Balls in their own international events not only to suit foreign visitors but also to prepare their own players for using Dawson Balls in world championships. The Dawson Ball can now claim to be genuinely ubiquitous.

Bryan retired from ball manufacturing and sold the business in 2017 to a fellow Australian who continues to manufacture Dawson Balls and export them all over the world. Bryan’s unique contribution to modern croquet will be remembered and appreciated by croquet players for as long as the Dawson Ball continues to be used.

Bryan continues to take an interest in croquet. The day after this presentation, he came to Essendon Croquet Club to watch play in the first day of the Association Croquet World Championships.

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2020-02-13

Strong field at Shepparton for GVCA tournament

Shepparton Croquet Club hosted the Goulburn Valley Croquet Association Annual Golf Croquet Open Singles Tournament on 12 and 13 February.

The weather wasn’t kind.  The temperature was in the mid 30s on both days, and the humidity was high.

Thirty-two players from fourteen clubs around Victoria, NSW and ACT competed.

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2020-02-23

Experience sees off youth at AC Worlds

This looked like the year for the young guns to come through. The WCF World AC singles finals were dominated by young competitors, with three players under 30 making the semi-finals: Edward Wilson and Robert Fletcher (both Australia), and 21 year old Matthew Essick from the USA.

In the semi-finals, Essick defeated Fletcher, the world number one, 3 games to 1. Bamford defeated Wilson 3 games to 2, from a 2 games to zero lead - Wilson won the third and fourth games, pushing Bamford to raise his play a notch in the fifth.

The final saw Essick, in his first Worlds final, playing Bamford, who was going for his fifth Worlds AC title.

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