Inter-Livery Croquet 2025

The annual Inter-Livery croquet tournament took place on 2nd June at its usual venue Surbiton Croquet Club on a beautiful sunny and breezy day. As ever the six competing companies were the Haberdashers, Ironmongers, Barbers, Apothecaries, Pewterers and Founders. There were many familiar faces but it was good to see quite a number of new participants. Since the first tournament about 20 years ago, it has been organised by Andrew Gillett, but he decided to relinquish the reins this year, which were ably taken up by the Jumbo Jenner of the Apothecaries.

The tournament involves each company putting up two teams of two players, one to play Association and the other to play Golf Croquet. One of our players withdrew on the morning of the event, but fortunately there was a Surbiton club player, Alan Hardy, on hand to make up our numbers, so our teams were Alan Ewart and Alan Hardy playing Association and John Wood and debutant Richard Emslie playing Golf Croquet. Each team played three matches before adjourning for Pimms and a delicious 4 course lunch prepared by the club members. We staggered through two more matches in the afternoon before proceedings were completed about 5pm with presentation of trophies.

The clear winners of the Association competition were the Barbers, who were the only team to win 4 matches. We came joint second alongside the Ironmongers and Pewterers all with 3 wins. In the Golf croquet we came equal first with the Haberdashers on 3 wins and 1 draw each and both running the same number of hoops over the five matches played, but for convoluted reasons completely beyond me the competition umpire awarded first place to the Haberdashers.

The overall winners of the day were declared to be the Barbers which was again a mystery to me as the Barbers total wins for the two croquet disciplines was 6 (4 from Association and 2 from Golf). We also had 6 wins but additionally 1 draw so I believe our score was 6 ½ and the highest combined score of the day. The only reason I can think of for us being declared runner-up was that we had a non-Founder playing for us. Anyway the Barbers were awarded the splendid “Salamander with mallet” trophy.

So all in all we enjoyed quite a successful day on the lawns in splendid convivial company.

Author: Alan Ewart