THE last league matches of the summer saw home and away tussles for two of Camerton and Peasedown’s Golf Croquet teams - and a good end of season result for their Association Croquet Federation team.

In August the CPCC Level play 5+ ‘A’ team, captained by Ann Munton, played Bath CC; first at Bath on the 4th and then, in the return match, at home on the 18th .

In the away match the CPCC team had played well and the singles games were shared equally with each team winning six rubbers. But the results in the doubles matches had not gone in Camerton and Peasedown’s favour and they ran out losers on the day in a close final result of 7 games to 9.

The CPCC team were looking forward to the return match on their home lawns in Peasedown. The weather was cooler than it had been and each game was competitive. At lunch the scores were even, both teams having won four games. As the afternoon went on the CPCC team pulled ahead, winning the majority of the singles games. The final result of was a 9 - 7 win for Camerton and Peasedown. A special mention goes to Jonathan Flatt who beat two very good players and succeeded in winning all of his games.

The Camerton and Peasedown High Handicap team completed its summer programme with a return match against Bristol.. After a heavy defeat in July on Bristol’s bone dry lawns the CPCC team, captained by Peter Buchanan, was hoping for revenge in the return fixture to be played on the well-kept turf in Peasedown St John. But it was not to be!

Despite making a good start with 2 wins in the first round of games, overall, on the day, they ran out losing 5 games to 11. The home team did win 3 of the 4 doubles, but their singles play produced only 2 wins from 12 games. In Handicap play it is expected that games will be very close and they are often decided by the winner of the ‘golden’ or ‘tie break’ hoop.

This was the case on that day with Bristol winning 4 games at the golden hoop, including a 15-hoop marathon which saw Bristol’s Joe Unsworth claim the narrowest of victories over CPCC’s Barbara Knight. CPCC’s most successful player was Ray Cohen, with 3 wins from his 4 games, matched by 3 out of 4 for Bristol’s Gerry Dawson, Joe Unsworth and Judy Ponsford.

Meanwhile, Association Croquet is a distinctly different format to Golf Croquet although it is played on the same sized lawn and Camerton and Peasedown enter a team in the South West AC Federation League.

In mid-August, the AC Federation team of David Richards (H -0.5), Mark Godfrey James (H 3) and Simon Munton (H 11) travelled to Glamorgan. At one point the Glamorgan team had wanted to rearrange this fixture claiming that they had a lack of available players. However on the day Glamorgan put out a team with handicaps of -2, -0.5 and 0.5; which, in Association Croquet, is a very strong team indeed. At lunch, CPCC were 2 games down and after the remaining games it was a 1-4 loss for CPCC. Team captain, Simon Munton, recorded the team’s only win.

Despite this loss CPCC’s final position in this League was overall second.