The All England Handicap is an annual handicap singles event organised by the Croquet Association. Clubs run their own heats, with the winners of all play all blocks going through to the Area Final, and the qualifiers from that progressing to the National Final. Maldon members have achieved notable successed in the tournament in the past but before 2023 our best result was 2nd overall.
2023 result: John Ferguson, Walter Hall and Graham Parker qualified from the club heats and travelled to Surbiton to represent Maldon in the Area Finals on 31 July. John and Walter qualified for the National Final which took place at Ryde, IOW on 9-10 September. There were 14 finalists and everbody played everybody else over the course of the weekend. John did well, winning 6 of his 13 games and finished in the top half. Walter won all 7 of his games on the first day and, despite suffering 2 narrow losses on Sunday afternoon, finished strongly by winning his last game against his nearest rival and was the outright winner with 11 wins.
Full details are in the Croquet Association news release at:
https://www.croquet.org.uk/?p=press/news&NewsID=8318&pup=y
Colchester Inter-club tournament is a level play singles competition played annually by teams of 4 from 4 clubs (Colchester, Chelmsford, Maldon and Southchurch).
In 2023 Chris Joslin and Graham Parker reached the quarter finals. The tournament was won by Michael Manning from Colchester, but formerly a member of our club.