Croquet Victoria
Advancing Croquet in Victoria

News

Earlier news

2025-01-25

Publicity Zoom Session with Alison Maugham

Marketing and Publicity at Croquet Victoria are excited to be able to bring you a zoom session with English croquet website and digital creator Alison Maugham.

 

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2025-01-22

VCA Open Doubles Tournament 22-23rd January 2025

Under cloudy and cool conditions  the VCA Open Doubles Event is underway at the Victorian Croquet Centre.

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Current news

News Date: 2025-01-27
Posted on: 2025-01-27
News Type: General

The Victorian Open Doubles, Australia Day and Singles Tournaments were held at VCC  this week.

All tournaments went of extremely well with the weather for the 1st 5 days  being very pleasant , no wind and overcast conditions for the mornings and  slightly warmer in the afternoons. Thanks to the volunteer grounds helpers at VCC who had  all 12 courts in excellent condition.

Special thanks to Chas Quinn who managed to play and assist with hoop setting throughout the 3 tournaments. Catering was again on offer at the facility and thanks must go to RNB Croquet Club with Terri and Bill Manwaring doing a fabulous job over the 6 days. Referees although in short supply did a wonderful job throughout the weekend and the players responded accordingly to the low referee numbers which made the week wonderful to watch and showing great sportsmanship

In the doubles event we had brother and sister, (Shane Downie and Julie Beasley) playing off against Father and son duo (Bill and Paul Manwaring). This highlights what a “family affair” croquet can be and across the generations also. Mention should be made of Julie Anderson and Steve Podolak (Belmont) who competed in their 1st Vic Doubles tournament and played very well coming 4th. A great result for that couple. 

The doubles final proved to be a very close game and was extremely well supported by spectators who stayed to watch the event final.

On Friday 24th we hosted the “Australia Day Tournament” with 36 entries from across the regions. A great day was had by all with 6 divisions allowing very competitive fields within each division. There were many first-time visitors to Cairnlea which was wonderful to see and we hope they will be encouraged to return next year. Damien Hadfield from Kyneton won the Australia Day Cup with medals awarded to each division winner and runner up. 1st time competitors to VCC noteably were Julie and Trevor Ware from Maldon who both took out their separate divisions. Other division winners were Julie Anderson (Belmont), Heather Dawn (Macedon Ranges) and Denise Mitchell (Monash)

Sunday 27th saw the finals of the VCA Singles Tournament - this event had to have some rapid rescheduling due to the forecast 42-degree temperature. The finals took place Sunday afternoon and were all very closely fought games with great skill and strategy on offer. 3 Tasmanian, 1 Western Australian and 1 Queensland entrant competed in this event. It finished on Monday morning, which started at 7.30 am with a hail shower prior to the game commencing and then an interruption for lightning during the game!!!

The winner of the 19-point game was Andy Barbero from Wangaratta, with Owen Dickinson 2nd, Richard Hingst 3rd and Damien Hadfield 4th.  All players are part of our Victorian Selectors team.See pic below

We hope to see all these competitors return to VCC in 2026 for these events and some new faces are always welcome.

 

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Later news

2025-02-05

Murray Powers

The passing of Murray Powers on 20 January 2025 was sad news for the members of the  Ringwood Croquet Club.  He was laid to rest on 31 January.

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