Bury beat Yorkshire 7-4

[<<] [>>] by Richard Leach at Bury
26th May 2022 (AC - Short Croquet Inter-Club)

Bury Team - Roger Schofield 1P, Richard Leach (Captain) 5, Richard Harvey 5, Vi Richards 6

Yorkshire Team Sue Longcroft 3.5, Debbie James (Captain) 3.5, Helen Griffiths 7, Denise Foster 9

Miserable weather greeted the teams at Whitehead Park in Bury. The doubles match saw Bury represented by Vi Richards and Richard Harvey taking on Sue Longcroft and Denise Foster. The singles games saw Roger Schofield facing Helen Griffiths while the two team captains Richard Leach and Debbie James faced each other.

Richard Leach and Debbie James had a hard fought match with Debbie James winning 11-10 on the Golden Hoop. The doubles match finished with Yorkshire also winning 9-8 on the Golden Hoop. Roger Schofield denied Yorkshire the clean sweep in the opening session by beating Yorkshire's Helen Griffiths 11-8 on time.

In the afternoon the weather improved as the rain went away while the wind started to pick up. The first session of the afternoon saw Richard Leach win a tricky match against Yorkshire's Sue Longcroft 14-8. Richard Harvey lost 14-11 to Helen Griffiths after an unsuccessful attempt to peel his partner ball and run rover with his active ball at the same time. Roger Schofield whitewashed Debbie James 14-0 as Debbie struggled to contend with the fast lawn around hoop 1 and corner 1. In the final game on the opening session of the afternoon saw Vi Richard beat Denise Foster 9-6 on time.

The final session of the day saw Roger Schofield face Denise Foster, Richard Leach face Helen Griffiths, Richard Harvey face Debbie James and Vi Richards face Sue Longcroft. The first match of the final session to finish was the match between Richard Harvey and Debbie James. Richard found his form during the match and made 2 very good breaks including a peel with very good use of his bisques. This led to Richard winning the match 14-6.

The second match to finish was the match between Richard Leach and Helen Griffiths. In spite of the early use of 4 bisques Helen took her lead ball round to peg. Richard followed suit by taking his second ball round to peg with the use of just 1 bisque. He finished his turn after pegging out Helen's lead ball and putting distance between the three remaining balls on the lawn. After that Richard took his lead ball round to rover before Helen struggling due to lack of a partner ball used her remaining 3 bisques to get her second ball round to hoop 5. However she left both of Richard's balls wired so he used his lift and his remaining bisques to run hoop 6. After Helen missed a long range roquet shot Richard pegged out both balls to win the match 14-11.

The match between Vi Richards and Sue Longcroft was very difficult particularly due to the strong gusts of wind which buffeted the players and balls on the lawn. As a result the match finished with Sue winning 6-3 after time had expired. The final match to finish was the match between Roger Schofield and Denise Foster. Roger Schofield felt that he was lucky to take the win 10-8 on time after being behind for the majority of the match.

The final score was Bury 7 Yorkshire 4.

Thanks to Yorkshire for putting up a strong performance on the fast lawns at Whitehead Park. Also thanks to Bury's Croquet club members Roy Spencer, Phil Nuttall, Margaret Eccles and Ken Eccles for coming down to the club to show some support for both teams.