Exhibition Match – June 4th

Reigate Priory has the privilege of having one of the best players in the world as a member, but on Sunday 4th June 2023 we’ll be welcoming a second top 10 player, albeit for one day only! As part of our Centenary celebrations, there will be exhibition matches played out between Mark Avery and Jamie Burch at our own Reigate… Read more →

Centenary Dinner

On the evening of Tuesday 2nd May, members with partners and friends were sipping a chilled crémant watching the setting sun from balcony of the Reigate Priory Cricket Club pavilion as a prelude to dining in the pavilion below. The occasion was the Croquet Clubs Centenary Celebration dinner. After the somewhat haphazard arrangement of the balcony group photo, the 3… Read more →

Dawn To Dusk

Just after 6am on March 5th, it was dark on the lawn but members were busy setting out the hoops and tightening them, ready for the long day of croquet – part of our Centenary Celebrations. The chairman was halfway up a pole at the far end of the lawn wearing a head torch and setting up a freeze-frame camera,… Read more →

R&B Sports Person 2023!

Reigate and Banstead put on a bit of a show last Wednesday evening, 1st March. Over 200 people, many of them youngsters, were seated in the Harlequin main auditorium at round tables bathed in purplish light, waiting with anticipation to find out who the winners were. No, the occasion was not was not a re-run of the BAFTAs, it was… Read more →

Dawn to Dusk

As part of our Centenary celebrations, we have a number of events planned, beginning with our Dawn to Dusk Challenge. The Game The format will be level play Golf Croquet, played the conventional way with all the current rules. However, the game isn’t finished at “first to 7” etc., it will continue through to hoop 12, directly to hoop 1,… Read more →

Technology in Croquet

While the fundamentals of croquet have existed for a long time now, many advances have been made in all areas, from the manufacturing of mallets, balls and hoops, to lawn maintenance, to online resources and more. Recently, there have been massive advances released in the world of Artificial Intelligence, from systems that can write complete original essays for students, through… Read more →

AGM Review

At the AGM on Sunday 20th November 2022, Chairman John Bristow outlined a full programme of events and items planned to celebrate the club’s Centenary year 2023. Some 6 events are proposed : a dawn to dusk continuous croquet day in the week the club was formed a new Centenary Plate competition likely to be GC 19-point GC a lunchtime… Read more →

Fitting it in… to win!

In the SECF U-League each of the 4 matches consists of seven 3¼ hour games played in one day between 4-player teams. Conventionally this was played as a doubles and 2 singles in the morning and 4 singles in the afternoon, however this is not possible to fit in on a single lawn club like ours, so all matches were… Read more →