First off, anyone that wants to debate the merit of croquet as a sport can turn around and walk right back out the door right now.

Okay, now that we've cleared out the deadwood, let's roll. Mallethead doesn't see how you can count the one-year entry of croquet in the Olympics in 1900 (before switching to roque for the 1904 event) as a valid attempt to evaluate the sport before giving it the boot. Consider this excerpt from Wikipedia:*