On November 5th & 6th, a mix of Irish and overseas GC players descended on Carrickmines C&LTC for the Carrickmines Autumn Golf Croquet Invitational sponsored by The National Chemical Company, the Croquet Association of Ireland and a bequest from the late Maymes Ansell.

Despite a drizzly grey start to the Saturday morning, the competition was played in fine weather with a pleasantly warm sun!  Saturday play was broken into two round robin blocks of 7 players each. The play was so competitive that most of the games ran slightly long meaning the last matches of the day were played as the darkness was settling in. Play finished just in time for the players to watch some Ireland v South Africa rugby before heading to the Clayton Hotel for dinner.

The top two from Block A were Patsy Fitzgerald and Will Gee and the top two from Block B were Dominic Nunns and Mark Stephens. Play re-commenced on Sunday morning with semi-finals between Patsy and Mark and between Will and Dominic. Due to time constraints each semi-final was a single 19 point game.The first semi-final was won by Patsy with a very narrow margin of 10-9 and the second semi-final was won by Will 10-5. In the final, Will took the lead by winning the first game 7-1 when Patsy levelled the match in the second game by winning 7-5.  With a crowd of spectators Will showed tremendous skill to win the third game 7-0 and claim first place.  Dominic managed to claim 3rd place with a win in two

games against Mark, 7-5 in each game.

The plate competition for the remaining 10 players was played as a single block with 7 point games. It all came down to the last round of games with Robert O’Donoghue and Fiachra Carroll in contention and it was Robert who came out on top and claimed the plate.

A fantastic weekend all round and a great many thanks go to Myles McWeeney & Fiachra Carroll for managing, Simon Williams for maintaining the lawns so well and Grainne Coburn for making sure everyone got lunch!