European Champions
Congratulations to the 2024 European Champions
Upcoming Events
Starting next week! The GC World Champions starts 18th October at Chesapeake Bay Croquet Club, Virginia, USA.
Livestreaming from Tuesday 22nd October.
See webpage: 2024 GC World Championship
... and in February 2025
We're pleased to announce that a sponsorship deal has been secured with PFC Mallets for the upcoming World Teams Championship. The WCF PFC Mallets Golf Croquet Team Championship : The Openshaw Shield will be held between Monday, 17th to Sunday 23rd February 2025 at the Northern Tasmanian Croquet Centre, St Leonards, Tasmania.
The 8 teams competing are: Australia, England, Egypt, Ireland, New Zealand South Africa, Spain and the USA. The holders, New Zealand will be hoping to retain their trophy, whilst Spain, newly promoted from Tier 2 will be keen to challenge the others in the top tier.
Spectators are welcome at both of these events if you wish to go along. Some livestreaming is expected and links will be published on this website and on the WCF Facebook page, a few days before each event.
Telc lawns now in use
The WCF is pleased to be able to report that the Czech Republic club in Telc now has 4 lawns. The club have worked hard over the past 18 months to lay 2 new lawns at the existing club, nearly all the work was done themselves, which is a huge achievement.
This now provides a larger venue in this region that can host tournaments. The European Under 21 Championship is scheduled to be played there next July.
Refereeing Corner - Scotland course
A GC Referees course was held at Balgreen Croquet Club in Edinburgh on 29th September 2024 at the request of Croquet Scotland, sponsored by the WCF. The course was led by Ian Shore and Ian Cobbold (Croquet England Examining Referees) and the candidates were examined to Croquet England standards.
The candidates were asked to prepare using the WCFs Online Training and Study Pack and this enabled the course to be held on a single day, rather than the normal two. The first time this combination had been used. The morning was largely devoted to on-court tuition and the afternoon for the written exam and on-court test.
Eight candidates had signed up for the course but one withdrew a few days before the course. Using the online training pack proved very successful with all the candidates passing the written exam, most by a comfortable margin. Well done to everyone who qualified.
Spotlight on…. Oxford Croquet Website
The Oxford Croquet (OxCr) site was started 22 years ago when the internet was a relatively new thing. Initially it collected together Dr Ian Plummer's (Dr P) coaching notes for the Oxford University Club and has rolled on from there. Whilst the site's appearance is now somewhat dated, Dr P tries to keep the information up-to-date. He spent last winter updating the database of world croquet clubs and their locations to include the type of mallet sport they play – this work continues.
There are approximately 700+ pages of information with sections on how to play, equipment, laws, refereeing, rankings, tournament management, technical, lawn care, world croquet club finder, club management, health & safety, promoting croquet, history, contacts & links, FAQ and miscellany.
The selection of material very much reflects Dr P’s own interests, hence in his words, “there are plenty of 'techie' articles”. Basic measurements such as ball bias, expansion when hot and heating due to sunlight were he says “great fun to do”. As was using publicly available land height data to view if croquet courts were level.
Hurlingham courts 2-6 and the bowls lawns. The river runs left to right at the bottom.
Contributions are welcomed from elsewhere and are collected whenever found e.g. from the Nottingham list.
OxCr has tried to lead the way in making association croquet material available to the public. For example, it hosted the first appearance of the Laws of Association Croquet on the web, offered on-line tournament management and demonstrated a tournament booking scheme.
Of the more recent additions the most valuable ones have been the animations of standard manoeuvres, 'The Virtual Lawn™', which plays in a standard web browser and give clarity to what is happening.
A sequence of diagrams does contain the information but like learning dance steps from a diagram, it requires perseverance.
Not all the publications available on the site have been without difficulty. It took 6 years and the redrawing of 202 diagrams, to be able to make Keith Wylie's Expert Croquet Tactics available to the cognoscenti.
The most popular page on the entire site, after the home page, is one to work out all-play-all scheduling (a round-robin or American block).
How to play, equipment and lawn layout are popular but treating worms in lawns comes out top!
Dr P says that the site's appearance is now getting dated and eventually it will be migrated to a new format which can cope well with mobile devices. It also needs an httpS:// address so that browsers do not complain that it is insecure. Fortunately, the nuclear launch codes were recently removed, so this is not an issue.
http://www.oxfordcroquet.com (please use http:)
The Spanish Federation celebrate their 30th Anniversary
Since the end of the 19th century (circa 1880) there exist pictures and graphic news of friendly or family croquet matches in Spain, especially in the north of Spain -"French Croquet" or "Crinoline Croquet". But this year marks the 30th Anniversary of the official constitution (22 March 1994) of the Spanish Croquet Federation (SCF). At the present time the SCF has almost 3,000 members and 35 croquet clubs (with 54 playing lawns) located in various Spanish regions. It is a full member, with 8 votes, of the World Croquet Federation (WCF).
In these 30 years the National Croquet Team or players selected by the Spanish Governing Body have participated in 89 World or European Croquet Championships across the various Championship types. They have won the 2017 and 2018 European AC Championships, the 2022 and 2024 European Women's GC Championships, the 2026, 2017 and 2024 European GC Championships, and as a National Team the 2020 GC World Team Championship Tier 2.1. Currently 29 players have a GC DGrade above 2000 and there are around 30 with an AC Grade above 1200.
The SCF has organized, since its constitution in 1994, successive Spanish Championships (30 of AC, 17 of GC, 10 Women's GC, 9 of AC or GC Under-21, 8 National Inter Clubs, 3 Over-60 and 3 Spanish AC Open and 3 Spanish GC Open). In the last four years (2021-2024) 438 Spanish ranked competitions have been included in Croquet Scores.
Croquet has recently been recognised in Spain as an official sport. Currently, the SCF is working to achieve its inclusion in the Spanish Olympic Committee and hopes to be able to continue to develop croquet in Spain and, consequently, to be able to help world croquet and the WCF in its growth.
In celebrating this 30th Anniversary the SCF would like to thank the WCF for these thirty years of great help, as well as for the magnificent work carried out by the SCF's successive Boards of Directors. Likewise, many thanks to the different countries and foreign croquet clubs for the enormous support with which they have welcomed the Spanish National Team and the Spanish players.