Dedicated followers have probably already noted the evolution of the Morning Coffee column over the past few weeks. Rather than an opening blurb and a laundry list of news items with links, I've changed the format to a straight opinion/column format. The are a couple of related reasons for the change-up.

First, the news links essentially exist via the Croquet Network Overdrive forum and are distributed in the weekly Croquet Network e-mail newsletter (you can subscribe here). Reposting them in an article on CroquetNetwork.com seemed redundant. Of more significance, as I've progressed further into website and magazine production for croquet, I've gotten away from writing about the sport. That's actually something I enjoy quite a bit -- talking about croquet.

So, part of the appeal of shutting down my own print magazine and taking on the USCA's Croquet News magazine was that with fewer issues per year, I felt that it would give me more of a chance to write again. I certainly don't have time to generate feature-length articles with multiple sources, but I would like to be able to crank out a regular column on a relatively frequent basis for Croquet Network. And ideally, that would possibly lead to more public internet discussion from the croquet community.

It's clearly going to take some work to change that as the recent poll we ran on favorite croquet websites shed a bit of light on the perspective of at least the most diehard segment of croquet players and fans. The Oxford Croquet website came out as the favorite with the Croquet Association site registering a solid second place. After that CroquetRecords.com took the third slot. It's an intriguing result in that I didn't even list Oxford or Croquet Records in the original poll. They both came in after voters put them in the other category. The omission was un-intentional and says more about how I work than anything else. The prominent sites that I use generate croquet news, so they were at the top of my mind when I put the list together.

Based on the top three, I guess we can infer that as expected the British are the most interested in croquet all together and the Notts List is the most powerful voice for croquet-related news. The Notts List post announcing the poll likely generated more than 80% of the votes. Since the CA site dominated the big four association sites, I'm taking a leap and deducing that we had more CA players vote.

As the Oxford and Croquet Records sites were so popular, it points to reference material being the most important driver for croquet players. That's a bit of a surprise in my opinion, but I suppose it points to the personal perspective of players. Rather than following the big picture, players are more interested in their own game and improving it. I believe that means that we still have quite a way to go in promoting the sport as a sport to follow amongst even the most hardcore. In short, reference and utility trounced news. It looks like the independent croquet news sites (like this one) may have to have to re-examine their game if they want to be relevant.