A report by Patricia Mulcahy who was Ireland’s sole representative at the World GC Championships held in North Carolina in October.

The CAI Selection Committee are pleased to announce that the following team has been selected to play in the GC World Team Championships taking place in Tasmania in February 2025.

Mark Stephens (Captain)
Alan Looney
Kieran Murphy
Evan Newell
Rob O’Donoghue
Simon Williams

Three events were held: the Singles Championship, the Maggie Handicap Doubles, and the Plate event.

Singles Event: 24 players were sorted into six blocks, with winners and runners-up advancing to the quarter-finals. Notable matches included Huw Spiers' victory against Mark Stephens and Simon Williams' triumph in the final over Glenn Fauske to claim the Irish Singles title.
Maggie Handicap Doubles: Cami and Tate Russock, a visiting couple from Florida, won the Doubles event, making them the first foreign names on the trophy. They defeated the Irish duo of Huw Spiers and Marguerite Cremin Chung in the final.
Plate Event: Celine Reilly won the Plate final, beating Henry Bagwell on hoop 13.

As we approach the final. the last Seed remaining (Mohamed Nasr) has fallen and the Finalists this evening are (only) two Block 3rd seeds Fawzy Helmy and Ayman Nagah. But these bare statistics do not reveal the high standards of this Competition as match after match was played with so many different aspects in play and just sheer intensity. In a way we have the two most deserving contestants in the Final as Mohammed Nasr (who lost to Fawzy Helmy in the semis last night on hoop 13 final game but more of that later) had actually dropped his only other game (a block 19 pointer) to Ayman.

Shock reverberates around the Croquet World .. Three ex-World Champs (+ Mohamed Taha = top 4 seeds) defeated in first Round of Knockout .. All games of a high standard but Reg's game is outstanding and I am going to say that is about equal to the best I have seen him play. The game never quite ran in his favour and on three or four critical moments he was forced into difficult options because of long-distance blocks (perfect pace) by his young (unknown) opponent: Particularly last game at hoop 11 where he was forced to have a go at jumping a ball in the jaws from angled North Boundary ..