Cornwall Croquet Club
Match Report
Sun 06 Sep 2009 - SWF Federation league (Played at Plymouth CC)
East Dorset v Cornwall
Cornwall, having won the South area competition, faced the Central area winners at Plymouth on Sunday 6th September.
The first challenge was to adapt to two different brands of balls, secondaries being Barlow's, and primaries Sunshiny, with distinctly different characteristics.
Richard Griffiths (capt.) partnered Peter Cutting in the doubles against Mike Glew (capt.) and Richard Vessey.
Peter played a classic aggressive opening using the 2 available bisques to get to 3-back. After some prudent tactical play the advantage of this lead was converted into a good first win at + 22.
Malcolm Hooper and Tony Backhouse had more protracted games, with Tony winning +1 despite having to give a bisque to John Pollard, a very tough opponent, and Malcolm (having very recently got down to a handicap of 8) conceding the narrowest of losses at -1 versus an opponent at the same handicap, though held for much longer.
Buoyed up by the 2:1 position at lunch, Cornwall started the afternoon with a good win (+24) for Richard, who deployed his best tactical handicap play to tempt Mike into a rapid and unfruitful use of 4 of his 5 bisques for no hoops.
A solid + 8 from Tony (receiving one bisque this time) secured the match win at 4:1 with plenty of play still to go in the other two games.
With the match already won, Malcolm sustained a -1 loss, and Peter, with 7 bisques, took a convincing +13 win, despite facing highly competent tactical play from th every experienced John Lonsdale.
Cornwall goes to the final at Bath vs Kington Langley on Sunday 27th September with high hopes for an historic win.
The Results
Morning:
Richard Griffiths (0) & Peter Cutting (15) Won 26 : 4 vs Mike Glew (5) & Richard Vessey (6)
Malcolm Hooper (8) Lost 21 : 22 vs John Lonsdale (8)
Tony Backhouse (7) Won17 : 16 vs John Pollard (8)
Afternoon:
Richard Griffiths (0) Won 26 : 2 vs Mike Glew (5)
Tony Backhouse (7) Won 26 : 18 vs Richard Vessey (6)
Malcolm Hooper (8) Lost 17 : 18 vs John Pollard (8)
Peter Cutting (15) Won 26 : 13 vs John Lonsdale (8)
Final Score: East Dorset 2 Cornwall 5