Jose Riva at Paraparaumu

2018 AC Worlds Report – Day 2

I spent today at Paraparumu – a four-lawn club with the top two lawns running around 10 seconds and the bottom two around 11 seconds. Regrettably, players partners and other spectators were banned from using the clubhouse. This is not the sort of hospitality that Croquet New Zealand expects from host clubs.

Jose Riva was the class player at the venue, completing two triples and three peels of a quintuple. Edmund Fordyce beat Jenny Clarke to put him into a decent position to qualify. Jonathan Powe extended his winning start to 5 games before losing to Pete Trimmer.

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Elsewhere, at Plimmerton, play became somewhat farcical with a 5-3 and a 6-5 score in a couple of games. Even defending world champion, Stephen Mulliner couldn’t cope with the playing surface, losing 10-12 to qualifier Vincent Commarieu. Felix Webby and Samir Patel retained their unbeaten record at the venue. The manager is going to attempt to avoid using the venue again after day 3.

Stephen Morgan at H5 playing against Riva. Click to Zoom.At Wellington, the lawns were described as “slow” by Paddy Chapman who maintained his unbeaten record.

At Waikanae, James Death came back from his bad start on day 1 to win all his games, including beating Dave Maugham. Reg Bamford reached 5/6 with 5 peeling finishes.

Even the slow-paced Kelburn lawns saw a game pegged down. The winds whipping across the lawns caused most players problems. Moberly beat Hockey with a tp and finished the day by beating Hogan after he stomped peelee off the lawn on a straight rover peel. Joe is playing with a heavier mallet than during the Mac and looks like a better player, but has yet to come to grips with irish peels.

I have now discovered that the draw was performed by Stephen Mulliner, somewhat surprisingly and entirely inappropriately, given that Stephen is a player and swaps between blocks are necessary. However, to prevent any problems in this regard, it was agreed that no swaps would be made involving Stephen’s block. Despite this agreement, Kevin Beard was swapped into the block and Alain Giraud out of it. How can the WCF have allowed this to happen after he tried to do the same thing in Florida?

Additionally, the regulations relating to avoiding same country clashes in the final round were not followed and the manager is now trying to fix this at the 11th hour.

The problems mentioned so far, in addition to the lawn quality at HQ make this the worst start to any World Championships I have attended. Let us hope that things improve and future reports can focus more on playing croquet.

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