It’s a game almost as old as Methuselah. Its origins lie in France a thousand years back in a game called jeu de mail and it’s related to golf, pall-mall, billiards, trugo, gateball … you might even think whac-a-mole.
Croquet, not to be confused with the French croquette, is a lawn game played with mallets, coloured orbs and hoops. When undertaken seriously, it involves clever and occasionally bloodthirsty strategy, as evidenced by its poison balls, death rolls, dambusters and even worse- than-death match jargon.
For the main part, however, croquet is a rather civilised affair. One that evokes images of Victorian crinolines, bustles, parasols, top-hats and mutton-chop whiskers, of Edwardian toffs in houndstooth and feminine athleisure.
All very decent apart from the odd disdainful harrumphs after a poor shot. And who knows, old boy, maybe a gin and tonic, or brandy and cigars later, what?
All very genteel. After all, even merry old England’s illustrious Wimbledon tennis hub started out as a croquet club, the All England Croquet Club no less, with its first competition in 1870. The game’s incarnation at the time had been imported from Ireland.
Today, croquet is one of sport’s great survivors, and played in the Geelong region by no less than five clubs – Belmont, Colac, Drysdale, Eastern Park and Queenscliff – under the auspices of the Geelong Croquet Association. With 50-odd members at each club, you’re looking at well upwards of 200 croquet players across Geelong.
Eastern Park, perhaps the most recognised club, along Garden Street behind Geelong High School, is a handsome ornament to the game with its green and cream timber clubhouse, hedges and lattice fencing.
Club secretary Norman Kennedy says croquet is a game can be well enjoyed without having to be a serious or champion practitioner player.
“The best thing about it, it’s a game both sexes can play easily, a mixed game. It’s a social game with ample opportunity to chat as you play,” he says.
“It’s still a game of strategy where you can play in teams of two and if your opponent’s ball in a good position you can knock it away without upsetting others – it’s all part of the game.”
Eastern Park has just undergone a renovation, courtesy landowner City Hall, with its clubrooms hosting a new re-stumped floor, a fresh paint job and replacement furniture. All spic and span, as Norman says, for its 70 members. In fact, the club’s full and has a membership waiting list.
Drysdale club members Wolfgang and Jane Klemenz, previously with Belmont, say golf croquet and association croquet are the two most popular forms of the game played locally.
And not always as polite as you might.
“Yes, the game is definitely cut-throat,” says Wolfgang, a former golf croquet captain for the Geelong region.
“To be good, you need to hit a ball straight,” he explains. “But the biggest thing is the strategy side of the game. You can learn to hit a ball but strategy you only really learn by doing the hard yards.
“First you have to get to know how your opponent plays. You need remember which ball follows you, who’s next.
“You have to figure out do you set up to hit another ball away or promote a partner’s ball to better position. Do you put one out wide as a wing defence?
“It’s almost like snooker and the greens are longer than a bowling green and can sometimes be very fast.”
Statewide, a total 87 croquet clubs are thwacking away, politely and tenaciously, across 14 regional competitions. Ground zero is Croquet Victoria’s Cairnlea club in Melbourne’s west with its dozen greens, where state, national, even world championships, have been staged.
Here in Geelong, croquet’s been about for at least a century. A Victorian Croquet Association-affiliated Geelong association was formed in 1921. The exclusive Corio Club staged a fund-raiser dance for new greens as far back as 1925, suggesting games had already been played for some time by then.
Less formal games possibly predate that by quite some years again. As Croquet Victoria explains: “Croquet is understood to have been introduced to England from Ireland in the early 1850s and was probably played in Victoria shortly after as there is reference to a Croquet Club in Kyneton in 1866. Other early records are Lilydale (1894), Ballarat City (1902), and Bendigo, Bright, Ballarat Western and Melbourne clubs in 1904.”
Clubs such as Queenscliff boast a strong heritage, with two greens and a third shared with the bowls club, and a growing membership.
Golf Croquet Club captain Helen Lymer says players are feeding into the club strongly, many of them retirees from new lifestyle villages nearby. But the cubby, as the club is referred to, could do with an update to update its “rustic” appearance. Possible funding sources are being lobbied.
“We have about 60 golf croquet players with a very good feed over the past 18 months from lifestyle villages in the area who have come and tried the game and then signed up,” she says.
“It’s a very happy club, even if the game’s tactics sometimes see little old ladies turning aggressive. It really is a lot of fun.
So as much as you might think croquet’s practitioners are revelling in a cultured, refined affair, all strategy and no real bloodlust, it seems there’s a chance they’re really in league with a croquet Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland revealed in a bloodthirsty take on the game.
Alice’s croquet has live hedgehogs serving as the croquet balls and live flamingo heads as the mallets belting them about.
Which is nasty enough but that’s before the Queen of Hearts cracks it and sends all the players, bar Alice and the King, off to be beheaded.
Yes, off with their heads! And pass the cucumber sandwiches if you don’t mind, old chap.
This article appeared in Geelong + Surf Coast Living magazine Spring 2024
