Federation Millennium Shoirt AC Competition – Chester – 25th July 2021

The Millennium Short AC competition at Chester was keenly contested on Sunday by a small but select group of experienced AC players from Bowdon, Bury and Chester. It was a day of good news/ bad news. The good was that it was a lovely sunny day ; the bad that the lawns were lightning fast. One player tried to make light of his thin take off inevitably disappearing off the lawn by singing a pop song from his youth , ” Keep on runnin’ ”  – not quite as good as the 1965 original by the Spencer Davis Group .

The Swiss format over 4 rounds worked well with victories and defeats spread around. Brian Kerr and former winner, James Thomas both scored 3 wins and Robin Tasker, the tournament manager had to consult the ” who beat whom ” default. The match between Brian and James was fascinating; James took an early ball to rover but then had a frustrating spell of hard but unsuccessful long distance hit in’s as Brian slowly clawed back the deficit by cat and mouse tactics which threatened  both hoop scoring and the peels which he would need to do before pegging out. As time elapsed Brian was one up and won both the game and the overall competition.

The winner took the trophy and both he  and James as runner up were presented with a bottle of the world famous Chester Sloping Lawn wine.  As the name suggests, the grapes must be grown on sloping ground – flat lawns produce flat wine, whereas sloping ground produces a wine  with an entirely different slant.  Once harvested, the treading of the grapes is a talent unique to players of the Association variant of croquet (far too complex a manoeuvre for devotees of Golf croquet).  I could go on, but suffice it to say that the whole process of production takes several years

A great time was had by all