We live in unprecedented times.
We appreciate that some of us will have far more important matters in our lives at the present time, others will be frantically busy dealing with the situation we face and to those of you involved in essential services we are particularly grateful.
However others will have unprecedented amounts of spare time on their hands. If you are looking for something to do here are a wide range of projects we have gathered from various sources from official surveys to individual chats. They have one thing in common they are all stand alone, novel and do not require significant bureaucratic input.
If you are interested in delivering one of them (and we mean actually doing, not discussing them in principle) please get in touch and we will try to allocate projects, co-ordinate interested parties etc. The idea would be that the aim should be to complete the task within the month (8&9 excepted!).
As you will see some of the ideas, which cover a variety of skills, are very fledgling and we have little idea of what might be possible but hopefully the descriptions will provide inspiration. Whilst we intend to provide a degree of co-ordination, we basically believe that this is one of those occasions where it is best to just get on and do something.
Please let us know if you are interested in doing any of the following:-
1 Create a document that can be used to help those seeking to establish a croquet club at another existing sports venue. Giving example of current co-existence and providing answers to the questions/problems that usually come up:-
a Golf
b Bowls
c Lawn Tennis
d Other
2 Create an app allowing managers and players to communicate lawn allocations and results to each other ie players register at start of event, the manager sets up games on the app, which alerts players to their next opponent and lawn, the players report the result via the app (in theory this additionally facilitates remote tournament management). Integration with croquetscores might be a further extension.
3 Create an index of web-links to existing croquet videos and matches
4 Create an app that allows players to "tick-off" croquet clubs as they visit them and also show when they are present at a club to their friends (hopefully that description might be enough for someone to have a vision)
5 Potentially possible to tie in with #4? A "twinning" app/site that allows clubs to advertise an interest in hosting [overseas, although that obviously need not be the case] players/clubs
6 Create some video content (likely by editing existing) aimed at attracting young players to the sport (or indeed any other market segment)
7 If anyone is interested in translating material from English to another language, we can ask that Member what they would most like doing
8 Increasing the scope somewhat, Global Croquet League Management System. The English Chess Federation has a system that allows each league around the country to register and manage its own league with its own rules (eg number of players, points for a win, bespoke rules on defaults etc) from a single site, saving each league to deal with the matter individually https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/. Is it feasible to create a solution for croquet globally that caters for AC, GC, Handicap, Level etc all hosted on one site for every league in the World to use?
9 If that sounds too easy how about a tournament management application that can deal with multiple venues, events and formats?
(All work would be on a voluntary basis on behalf of the WCF for the benefit of World Croquet).
If you are unable to help with any of the above but have a standalone idea of your own that you would like to see added to the list please let us know.
Cheers
Ian Burridge & Roberts Stafeckis
WCF Development Group
burridge.ian@googlemail.com
roberts.stafeckis@gmail.com
Reg Bamford (ZAF) defeated 21-year old Matthew Essick (USA) at the Victorian Croquet Centre in Melbourne to record his fifth Association Croquet world title, a record he shares with Robert Fulford (ENG). The scoreline was 26-12 tp, 14-26, 26-9 tp, 26-0 tp. Tricky court conditions tested both players' ability to play precision croquet and Essick can be very proud of his performance, especially his semi-final victory over World No. 1, Robert Fletcher (AUS). However, Bamford's greater experience and fine shooting proved ultimately decisive and he emerged a convincing winner.
Harold (Hal) Denton (USA), Begoña Elzaburu (ESP), Samir Patel (ENG) and Amir Ramsis (EGY) were nominated for three places on the WCF Management Committee. Samir, Hal and Amir were elected to serve until 31 December 2023 with 44, 41 and 37
The Secretary-General visited the newly-formed Algarve Croquet Club in Portugal to provide coaching and to discuss the formation of a new Portuguese croquet governing body. It is hoped that a Portuguese Croquet Association will be formed and that Portugal will be represented in the Tier 3 of the 2020 Golf Cro
As noted above, Amir Ramsis completed his term as WCF President on 31 December 2019. In his eight years in office, Amir has assiduously attended most of the WCF Events in that time to welcome the players, assist with presenting the trophies and to express the appreciation of the WCF to all the Event Hosts. His enthusiasm and support for both codes of the game will be warmly remembered by all who have met him.
