Bath reach SWF Federation Final with win against Broadwas

Bath Croquet team reached the South West Federation Final with a comfortable victory over Broadwas 5-0.

The Bath team got off to a flying start with captain Pete Miles winning the first match of the day. The doubles team of Paul Francis and Neil Pinker won in the closest game of the day on a very fast lawn to put Bath 2-0 up at lunch.

In the afternoon singles Neil got well ahead in his game against Roger Wood and then struggled to make much further progress, the game finally going to time with a good Bath win.

Pete finally mastered the fast lawn with two very careful all round breaks though failed in his peg out first attempt. Opponent Stuart Smith missed the leave and Pete finished the game. Paul’s game against John Guy started out much closer until Paul exerted his better game and ran out winner to complete the Bath victory.

Bath will now play Winterbourne Valley in the Final to be held at Cheltenham on Sat, 24 September with the winner going into the national Secretary’s Shield competition next season.

Paul Francis & Neil Pinker beat Stuart Smith & John Guy 18-13

Pete Miles beat Roger Wood 26-10

Neil Pinker beat Roger Wood 21-9

Pete Miles beat Stuart Smith 26-8

Paul Francis beat John Guy 26-15

A common theme during play on lawn 1 was “hunt the ball in the hedge” as demonstrated by the photo below of Paul undertaking a search. Plans are in place to stop this happening so often.