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You are here: Home / Archives for Roger Schofield

Croquet Season Opens with a Splash

29 March 2016 by Roger Schofield

No Damp Spirits at Pendle

Baling out at Pendle - March 2016 (Photo - Paul Rigge)
Baling out at Pendle – March 2016 (Photo – Paul Rigge)

Richard Foreman Reports from Pendle:

Good Friday’s John Beech Tournament at Pendle can be a hardy affair, but this year the sun was shining gloriously with a faint breeze for this Easter Tournament.  Players came from Middlesbrough, Glasgow, Bury, Fylde, Bowdon, Huddersfield and Pendle to enjoy a season opener on Pendle’s new lawns. A warm welcome was given by Garry Wilson and a bluff hello from Rigge (beer in hand).  Roger Schofield prepared hot-cross buns and duly decorated them with a seasonal cross: jam scones and cream, chocolate fudge cake and savoury nibbles were welcomely quaffed by the exceedingly thankful players.

Saturday’s early front runner after Friday’s matches is David Walters with an incredible roquet to get back in and peeled his last three to win +26TP.  At 4 pm the heavens open with a deluge, Rigge donned rain-weather gear, a white waterproof jacket, shorts and his trusty fedora.  Jane Bailey supplied the mouth-watering array of cupcakes and a Victoria sponge to die for.  David Walters has finished two games out of three with a TP. The rest of the pack left in his wake. It’ll take a stalking horse to make an upset, but that’s croquet.

The new drainage put in last Autumn is working admirably and the only puddles were outside the huts as the lawns were wet but still playable.

Sunday morning opened its eyes a pale primrose sun but the Earby breeze set the weather vane spinning madly on its axis. Play was countered against an iron wind wobbling balls and watering eyes, though the worst of it came around 12 noon as an out of season shower of hail whipped the cat-o-nine tails as players forged on regardless to post wins to keep the chasing pack in contention behind David Walters.  After lunch play carried on under a pale azure sky and the clouds scudded past.

Roger Schofield continues the report:

Late Sunday in a handicap game Garry Wilson takes a ball round with 3 bisques. David Walters hit in takes his ball round and leaves 2 balls on the lawn. Garry uses his remaining 7.5 bisques to get his last ball round and win +11.

Monday morning storm Katie has flooded every court. The competitors work hard to clear the lawn. By 11am Betty Bates was able to play Joe Lennon and Garry Wilson against Roger Staples. This was enough to settle all the results but no other games were completed before the entire lawn flooded again.

A successful tournament ensued giving first victories of the season to:

Gary Wilson (Pendle) – the John Beech trophy.
Davids Walters (Bowdon) – the Peter Dowdall Cup (Adv).
Joe Lennon (Glasgow) – High Handicap (>10).
Roger Staples (Middlesborough) – Low Handicap (<10).
David Walters (Bowdon) – Croquet of Leisure (most active).
Roger Staples (Middlesborough) – the Fastest Tankard.

 

 

2016, Federation, News, Pendle

Oldies Raise Over £700 in Croquet Marathon at Pendle

30 March 2014 by Roger Schofield

The quartet at the end of 24 hours
The quartet at the end of 24 hours

Was it the Ides of March or the Rite of Spring which brought four players to the lawns at Pendle on the first day of spring? Neither, it was Sport Relief! As part of Pendle and Craven Croquet Club’s recruitment and retention plan, the club decided to engage in a twenty-four hour croquet marathon. Our main purpose, unashamedly, was to promote the club and raise the club’s profile in our catchment area. We reasoned that we just couldn’t arrange a match and expect publicity, but that Sport Relief would give us the platform we wanted and more importantly, it was for a really good cause. Our angle with the press was twofold. First, it was for Sport Relief but from a unique sport, namely croquet and secondly and more interesting for the press, as it turned out, it was four `oldies’ who were undertaking this challenge. We succeeded in getting a half page article with photograph in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, The Craven Herald, The Barnoldswick Times and The Nelson Leader. As I write this article for the Gazette, the follow up article on the amount we raised, who won, etc., with appropriate photographs, has been emailed to our friends in the press, and we are hoping for similar sized articles in each of the aforementioned publications.

Early Morning Rainbows
Early Morning Rainbows

I know that you can’t wait to hear about the match so on with the report. The game was association croquet, not handicap and not advanced! In order to make it last 24 hours we increased the hoop points by 48 times to 1152 plus 2 peg points, i.e. 1154 up. We could have been playing yet, so we time limited the game to 24 hours. When time was called, Liz Wilson (2.5) Chairman of The North West Federation and Roger Schofield (2) Chairman of Pendle and Craven were leading 260 to Garry Wilson(12) and Paul Rigge(-1) Secretary of the North West Federation with their score of 204. This sounds quite a convincing win for Liz and Roger but they were more than 120 points in front when day light broke, so Garry and Paul were making quite a comeback and things might have been very different with a longer time limit.

Liz and Roger won the toss and elected to play with black and blue. Garry and Paul chose to go second. Kathleen Beech, widow of founding secretary John Beech, sounded the bell for play to commence at noon on Friday. It looked like the game would get of to a good start as Garry hit in on the fourth turn and made a good leave. Sadly for Garry, Roger hit and started a break. On the seventh turn Liz also started a break and went to rover on the first round but after this the scoring slowed down. It was 1:15pm before the Paul/Garry team ran its first hoop. A good excuse from Garry was that the court had been laid out specifically for the benefit of spectators sitting in front of the club house, and nothing was in its normal place and certainly not at right angles to the fences or even the cut of the grass! However, we all agreed that the winter work had paid major dividends and that the grass at Pendle was and is in superb condition in readiness for this year’s tournaments.

Darkness fell around 7pm and the halogen floodlights came on. We had arranged to hire the lights from the Skipton branch of SHC Ltd, an equipment and plant hire company, but they would have none of it and allowed us free use of the equipment – thanks, Johnny! Once the layers of clothing had doubled, even tripled, the drop in temperature became a strange incentive for play to speed up and our scoring rate increased. We are all convinced that Liz never missed a hit in, or a rush for the first nine hours. The fact that we could no longer see beyond the edges of the court may have helped our productivity or it may have been because Roger’s wife Kathryn arrived with the evening meal.

Roger either lining up a peel or sleeping
Roger either lining up a peel or sleeping

By 11:30pm our steady flow of visitors totally dried up. As the night rolled into the early hours our weather log showed a drop in temperature to 2 degrees and sometimes below, with rain like a spring shower alternating with rain like stair rods. It was the hail which arrived when Garry was playing that turned the court white, only to be gone five minutes later. It was around this time that Garry was heard to mutter, “If I have any more bright ideas, just remind me of tonight”. So the Gods of croquet were testing our stamina and as dawn broke they relented and a beautiful still, bright morning unfurled as the sun rose and the moon was still in the sky. It’s amazing how much a roquet echoes at half past five in the morning.

Throughout the night the play was mixed. Liz made the biggest break of 19 hoops. Paul made the next sizeable brake of 15 hoops peeling partner ball through the next 3 hoops unfortunately in the wrong direction. We put it down to disorientation, fatigue and sheer bloody mindedness. Roger then made a 17 hoop break but Paul countered with a 17 hoop break plus 2 peels on partner ball and a 21 point break with 3 peels on Garry’s ball, in the right direction this time. Paul’s break was never bettered in the match.

At 7:15am Garry’s wife Audrey arrived with the bacon sandwiches. She was our first visitor on Saturday, and we started to attract a large number of spectators from around 10:30. Our latest member (social member), Ken Tennant called time at 12 noon. By this time mental fatigue now partnered the physical tiredness as Liz asked what to do with her last stroke. Roger told her to, “Stick it in a corner”, so she went for corner four which was already occupied by Paul’s ball. Rather than capitalize on fatigue and in the true spirit of Sport Relief, Garry and Paul declared their shot, thus ending the game. We raised in excess of £700 pounds for Sport Relief and it is still coming in.

Ken Tennant calls time
Ken Tennant calls time

We have since been told that our score of 464 points scored in 24 hours may be a new world record, taking over from the previous record of 402 set on the 10th and 11th of June 2000 at Crake Valley….unless you know better!

As a club, we do not expect a queue for membership, but we do believe that this exercise will have put us front and centre in our community and may just have intrigued some sufficiently to drop in and try our wonderful game of croquet.

Roger Schofield & Garry Wilson

Further Report from Paul Rigge

Paul Rigge, as part of this year’s BBC Sports Relief fund raising activities was called into service to play Croquet for 24hours at Pendle Club, alongside Roger Schofield, Gary Wilson (who’s Bl***y Daft idea it was) & Liz Wilson.

Pendle *challenged* the Federation officers to play them and raise money so doing, and us all being young & fit didn’t think twice, after all how hard can it be? We used to all attend full weekend parties, didn’t we?

Play started in high spirits and fine dry weather at noon on the Friday and early progress was made despite loads of interaction from both teams (PR/GW vs. LW/RS). At dusk the *floodlights* (four 500watt halogen’s) were turned on so play could continue unbroken, and that’s when nature turned on to; with wind, rain, hail, clear moonlight skies, all being rotated in turn during darkness – it introduced another tactic into the game; ‘break down’ and send oppo out into the rain/hail/colder bits and regain the innings afterwards when that bit of weather had passed!

Food (it’s at Pendle remember), arrived, it seemed every two/three hours to keep our bodies fuelled for this marathon session, and fun and good conversation twix the *out players* kept sprits up through the long dark night – with the assistance of a donated bottle of Calvados when our ‘spirits’ needed topping up.

The current world record (according to the Guinness Book) for number of hoops run in a 24 game, is held by Crake in a match against Southport back in June 2000, the total was 402. By Noon on the Saturday, when the bell was rung (to our relief) to end the *timed game*, we’d managed 464!……but it will not count as the new *official* record, since nobody notified ‘The Book People’ before this event that we were making an attempt. However we did manage to raise more than £800 towards the charity total…smiles all round from us and the club got some great paper coverage.
Details of the sponsorship site, if you wish to contribute ( http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/24hourcroquet )

2014, News, Pendle

John Beech RIP

12 September 2006 by Roger Schofield

A Tribute to John Beech (Died 10 September 2006) by Kathryn and Roger Schofield

JohnBeech
John Beech

John Beech, the man, where do you start to do justice to a man who was so much to so many people?

First and foremost John was a Christian and a family man. His faith shone through in all parts of his life, and he loved to go anywhere and everywhere to preach the gospel of Christ as a Methodist local preacher for over 40 years. He leaves a devoted wife, Kathleen, four grown up sons, Simon, Paul, David and James, daughters-in-law and two grandchildren, Charlotte and Jonathan.

After these came the other great loves of his life Stoke City Football Club and croquet. You would be amazed how often Stoke City and some aspect of croquet appeared as illustrations in his sermons! He was also a member of the Gideons.

John was an outgoing, friendly kind of chap, who could talk to anyone and usually did. He worked in education during his working life and finished his career with Bury Education Authority. He went to agricultural college which enabled him to write his book “Lawn Management”.

John went on a course through work where there was a croquet lawn and came back home full of enthusiasm for this wonderful sport. At a similar time his friend and neighbour, Norman Hicks, was also introduced to croquet at a different venue. They got their heads together and played on John’s back lawn. As John often said they thought they knew how to play but later they discovered they were not necessarily obeying all the rules! As John was a Methodist and Norman was a Baptist they each went to their different churches on a recruitment drive, and a few of us who liked playing bat and ball went to a meeting at John’s house and formed Croquet in Pendle and John started his own little business, Woodland Mallets. We played on the back lawn for a bit, but as you know nothing was impossible to John. It wasn’t long before we were playing on the front lawns at Nelson and Colne College, then we added three more lawns round the back, then we had to move these back three lawns on to a different part of the playing fields. Then we eventually moved to Earby after several abortive attempts at other sites in the Pendle area. Throughout all this development John worked tirelessly at any and every job at the croquet club. If no one else would do it, John would take it on, as well as the hundreds of jobs he was already doing.

John was well known throughout the croquet world and has been a past chairman of the North West Federation of Croquet Clubs and also for quite a number of years Development Officer and a member of the C.A. Council. Many clubs including Bury, Llanfairfechan and Culcheth are grateful for the many hours he put in helping them get established. He did a great deal to help the development of croquet in the north. When our club wanted to honour him in some way at the newly developed club in Earby all he wanted was a CA Diploma. He achieved this when at our opening ceremony in July 2005 the Chairman of the CA, Ian Vincent, presented him with this award. Sadly he was not able to play much croquet at the new grounds, having suffered a stroke just a few months after we started playing there. But what a legacy he has left to the croquet world and especially to us at Pendle & Craven Croquet Club. We give grateful thanks for having known John and urge you all to play more and more croquet and to enjoy your croquet because that is what John would have wanted most. He will be sadly missed.

2006, Federation, News, Pendle

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