“Oh the Courts outside are frightful
But the hoops and balls delightful
And since we’ve no place to go
We practice jump shots in the snow”

Playing Croquet at Pendle is always a pleasure but even more so when the Pennines have their annual covering of snow. Paul Rigge had fun knocking a few balls around and even did some interesting coaching on Jump Shots on the skippy slippy surface.

By the end of the day it was announced the area was to be placed in Tier 4 – restricting the Pendle croquet world to only two players per court for the foreseeable future.

Pendle Short Croquet Tournament 11th October 2020

Pendle & Craven Croquet Club hosted the new ‘End of Season Short 14pt’ yesterday and became the only place in the country where competitive croquet was being played. Players collected in Earby to contest the last tournament of the year.. well maybe. Watch this space…

The club was nearly at maximum capacity with eight half lawns laid in new holes for this single day (reduced to such as a nod to C-19, no need for hotels).

Players split into two All-play-All blocks and then into KO for final placings.

It might have been a tournament, but the player atmosphere matched the weather; bright, sunny & cheerful, played in great humour & fun!

With all games being untimed, play started promptly at 9:30 and finished just before we ran out of light!

And that was only possible by eschewing the planned Semi-finals and playing the top block winners against each other to sort a winner with Block runner’s up facing each other for 3rd/4th slot.

New tournament = new winner = Neil Adams from Lorna Dewar with John Henderson taking 3rd from Tom Dewar.

One Player comment on the day; “It really was a fabulous day and so helpful and uplifting” – nuff said!