Nailsea and District Croquet Club faced local rivals Bristol Croquet Club in the first Short Croquet League match of the season and it proved to be a closely fought encounter.

Short Croquet is a shorter version of Association Croquet and is played as handicap play on smaller lawns. 

In a League match, each team has four members and they all play all the opposition team in singles games.

Nailsea won all their first-round matches but honours were equal in the two subsequent rounds so the scores were poised at 8-4 going into the final round.

The first three results came in as Nailsea losses, making the score was 8-7 to Nailsea, with Geoff Hughes (Nailsea) still playing against Wayne Wiseman (Bristol).

Both have low handicaps and are obliged to do “peels” where one ball pushes another through the hoop.

They both had one peel remaining when time was called, bringing on the very unusual “golden hoop” where the winning point could only be scored by completing a peel.

The players tried to out-manoeuvre each other, knowing that a mistake would be costly.

Eventually, it was a shot from Wayne that went awry.

Geoff seized the advantage, completed his peel, and won the game 11-10, enabling Nailsea to win the match by nine games to seven.

Paul Arbos shared the Nailsea man of the match award with Hughes, by virtue of his 3 wins.

Hughes, Andrew Wimshurst and Kathy Wallace won two games each.

The match was played in good spirit on excellent lawns and the day ended with the usual tea and cake.