A familiar looking CAI Juniors team travelled to Nottingham with high hopes of overturning the CA team that won the inaugural competition the year before. This year was a mix of both golf croquet and handicap, the latter representing a great opportunity for us against some of the CA players with low handicaps. However, they had chosen a team with some new faces with handicaps similar to ours so that didn’t really pan out and we ended up giving bisques on a couple of occasions… The weekend started with doubles golf where we were slower out of the blocks than we should have been and this handed an early advantage to home side from which I don’t think we recovered. Though we had some good wins including one with a hoop 13 finish from the boundary courtesy of Louise after I played a ridiculous block that never came off and she was cleared! The singles golf was slightly more successful, Ben in particular moping up the lower seeds but there were many 7-6 results that didn’t go our way. We were then treated to an excellent meal by members of Nottingham croquet club who entertained us very well throughout the weekend. The next day, our inexperience showed with only 1 doubles handicap win and only 1 singles win. Back to the drawing board I think but if we can turn those 7-6 results in our favour, I think we will stand a great chance in the return fixture in the coming year!

Danny Johnston.

PS We need some competition for squad places so if you’re in education, start practicing!

The Irish Team was Louise Ireson, Kieran Murphy, Fiachra Carroll, Danny Johnston(Captain) , Ben Harris, Andrew Murphy.