As the croquet world turns its attention to the 2025 WCF Under 21 Golf Croquet World Championship, Croquet Network is excited to present an exclusive video preview featuring renowned commentator and former AC World Champion Chris Clarke.
Read MoreWCF Announces New Ranking Regulations
The WCF has announced that the member organizations have voted to approve the new ranking regulations. These are now available to view on the Statutes & Regulations page of the website: worldcroquet.org/wcf-business/statutes-regulations/
These regulations govern the operation of the Association Croquet Grading System (ACGS) and the Golf Croquet Grading System (GCGS) which are used to generate ranking lists of individual players and teams in relation to AC and GC respectively.
Read MoreBeyond Expert Croquet Tactics - New Book
The Croquet Association (UK) in now selling a limited run of a new book titled Beyond Expert Croquet Tactics. The ambitious book has a wide-ranging focus, but at the top of the list it looks to provide updated tactical advice on Keith Wylie’s Expert Croquet Tactics which was first published in 1985.
Read MoreClark: 2018 AC Worlds Overview
Many congratulations to Paddy Chapman on becoming our new AC World Champion! The final was a good quality match played in easy conditions – apart from during one downpour when the lawns became unplayable for about 10-15 minutes. Unfortunately, the hoops were left in the same holes that had been created on Wednesday and which had become wet inside with overnight rain. This made the final very much a shooting contest rather than a more complete test of skill. We need to ensure that hoops are in fresh holes for finals – as is normally the case.
Clarke: Bamford and Chapman for the Title #09
The semifinals were played at the Wellington club. The lawns were only running at 10 seconds after overnight rain, but the hoops were in fresh firm ground, albeit they were set much wider than a standard Wellington Open weekend. The day started overcast and there was the occasional light drizzle as it progressed.
Read MoreClarke: Top Four - Chapman, Mulliner, Bamford and Riva #08
We were treated to four interesting matches at Kelburn today. The sun was out and there was no breeze, so conditions were as benign as they could be. By early afternoon there were a couple of faster patches near hoops on most of the lawns which made breakplay that bit more interesting.
The first match to finish was Chapman v Patel. It looked like a straight games victory for the Kiwi before he failed rover when about to peg Patel out in the third. Patel took that game, but Chapman then won the fourth.
Read MoreClarke: 2018 AC Worlds Preview
The 2018 WCF Association Croquet World Championship starts this Saturday in Wellington, NZ. Five clubs are being used and I’ll try to send photos from each of them as the event progresses. There are eight blocks of 10 players with the top four qualifying for the knockout from each block, with ties on wins being broken with play-off games, so net points are irrelevant.
Read More2017 Best of Croquet Network
As we roll into 2018, here's our brief annual look at the most popular articles and pages on the Croquet Network site for 2017. It's always interesting to see what rose to the top over the past year. This year the big change is that for overall content we saw the popular Backyard Warrior and Why Croquet Players Wear White articles knocked out of the top slots by the 2017 mallet directory and poll.
Read MoreVideo: New Zealand's Dramatic Win vs USA
Video from Chris Clarke: The last action of the USA v NZ Test at the 2017 MacRobertson Shield held at Mission Hills. We join it with USA leading 10-9. Chris Shilling is in the third against Stuart Lawrence and Aiken Hakes is game up against Jeff Soo.
Soo 13: Shield is Australia's for the Taking
Australia's Simon Hockey and Greg Fletcher confer during round 1
With two convincing test match wins, and facing a last-place USA team in the final round, Australia is in strong position to reclaim the MacRobertson Shield for the first time since 1935.
No one expects the Australian players to take this last round for granted. Throughout the series they have shown discipline and determination. Nor can they afford to relax yet. The Americans will be doing their best to play the spoiler, and after England's impressive 8-1 finish to the second round, Australia leads England by just 3 individual matches. If USA pulls off the upset and England beats New Zealand, England could easily overtake Australia on percentage of individual matches won.
For USA to win would be a monumental upset, though. While the rankings paint a mixed picture, on playing form the Americans as a group have not shown improvement over the course of the first two tests, while the Australians haven't had to; they have played well at every position from day 1.
New Zealand, trailing Australia by 8 individual matches, needs a big win over England along with a USA upset. The Kiwis have a history of playing their best against "the Poms," and will be hoping to write a new chapter to that history.
Peeling stats in the second round were surprisingly different from those of the first round. As a percentage of games won, NZ went from 54% to 81%, a remarkable improvement. (However, this comes in a 7-14 test match loss; without mining data from the scores and commentaries it is impossible to say how many failed tripling attempts there were.) Meanwhile, AUS dropped from 89% to 60%, ENG from 83% to 68%, and USA from 54% to 50%. The lawns are getting a bit firmer and faster, as expected after so many successive days of mowing, and are now running around 13 seconds.
Another factor in the reduced peeling percentages is failed TPOs. As Tallyrand said of the Bourbons, or was it Chris Clarke speaking of his erstwhile teammates, "They have learned nothing; they have forgotten nothing." Pegging out the opponent (or merely attempting to do so) has not been a percentage play here. Will we see more peeling of the opponent ball next week?.
Team orders have been posted. Australia has kept the same order as in tests 1 and 2. England has shuffled the doubles order (keeping the same pairings) and also shuffled the top four singles positions, swapping Maugham and Burch at 1 and 2, and Patel and Mulliner at 3 and 4. New Zealand keeps their order from test 2. For USA, Morgan, who sat out the last test, is in again at #5; doubles pairings are as in test 1, with the order shuffled.