Patricia Whitty (Rushbrooke), Celine Reilly (Herbert Park) and Jane Morrison (Balgreen, Edinburgh) represented Ireland at the first ever Women’s Golf Croquet European Championship, in Latvia.
Our three representatives did us proud. Click title to read Jane's report and photo.

Final Score  CAI 14 - CA 7

The annual match between Ireland and England for the McWeeney Trophy was played last weekend for the first time since 2019.

Ireland hosted the Association Croquet Home Internationals at Carrickmines Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club on June 11-12th 2022. Teams from Scotland, Wales and England visited to complete a full field fixture for the first time since 2019. Due to travel restrictions in place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 fixture was not played and Ireland could not travel for the 2021 match in the UK.

The list of current members of the CAI council has been added as a new page on this website.

Click here to view.

"To love a woman, you've got to know - how the rich die poor and the strong grow weak, Slave to love." Bryan Ferry's lyrics floated in the Budley air nearest young Mark Stephens' Bluetooth headset. He had love on his mind. Not of the unrequited type but one borne of mutuality - of purity of strike and swooshing of hoop. The young malletman (perhaps the finest hoopman to have ever excelled at Technical Drawing in Cabra-on-Sea during a brief pupil exchange with a Jose Maria Escriva academy of brown scapular woolmen) undertook his day three task with relish.

An exhortation unto muintir na hÉireann (the people of Ireland) resulted in a trio of young hotshots presenting their credentials to represent our nation in the 2022 ERC European Golf Croquet Championship. Having received the sporting imprimatur from the CAI's cognoscenti, Mssrs Murphy, O'Donoghue and Stephens stood to attention as the government Learjet taxi'd up at Baldonnell to whisk them to Budley. A teary Alan Looney invoked Big Jack from the tarmac: "Téigh agus buaigh é" (go and compete).

They were sent like a quasi-active service unit to Blighty. Not for them Marxist guff drenched in fertiliser, nitroglycerine, sugar and ball-bearings but a compassionate croquet philosophy intent on annexing silverware in a European Championship field of pure pedigree. Talk of a sea border had been abandoned back at Larne together with the protocol houha and confiscated cans of McEwan's lager.