Expanding the Empire

Before my departure, I had began contemplating and talking about why wasn't croquet popular anymore? Seriously, not only us, but most people that play seem to enjoy themselves. You dont exactly move a lot, but that doesn't hinder the videogame, television, or movie industry. Oh, you need space? Most places where people live have things called "parks", or even better "soccer fields". And the chief question, why in the world is croquet far less popular than its far less exciting, even less movement (carts), and more space hungry cousin, golf?

The popularity of golf is a strange thing when wondering why croquet fell out, and golf has remained in. The expanse golf courses take up is it redundant to say could support more than a few croquet courses. To add insult to injury, people that will spend a few hundred dollars on golf equipment, TIME, tournements, clothing, etc. generally try to hide their laughter when they are invited to a croquet match.

The above may have been more of a ramble, but I'm trying to bring in a bigger point. At certain times, at the old course and the new one, we have seen levels of interest in croquet that are larger than our 6 person capacity. As talked about before, this is both a boon and a bane. Its good becuase there is a wider interest in play than six people, its also bad becuase it creates the headache of "who gets to play". With five (maybe four, eh) "veteran" or "regular" players, its not exactly good for expansion when only one extra person can join a game. And as before it seems we go from periods of feast to famine, probably as a result of our restrictive nature. So here is not so much a following proposal, but something we have talked about many times. Its a call to action, and one that means more than just a single driven field operator can manage. Its going to require a certain, albeit, small time commitment (you can watch one less episode of The Daily Show a week I promise).

Basically, this is a call for actual expansion of Our Noble Club. I think with some recruitment it could be done fairly easily. At the onset, develop a roster of committed players. The divide this group into 2 (or even 3!) divisions. There would be the allowance of interdivision play, and while your score would be be counted in your percentage, each player has only be ranked in his respective division. At the end of a season, you have the interdivision playoffs and championship. Each division can decide if they want to play 9 wicket double diamond, or 6 wicket, or both. The real key is for each division to create a schedule that its members can play. The beauty of 2 or more divisions is that schedules for players could be more flexible.

Now heres the crazy part, instead of being locked on Jumpy's course, most of the division play would likely happen on the North Oval, the soccerfields, a park, where ever. Each division has a "captain" so to speak that is in charge of recording and calculating games. I haven't driven around to check, but I'm sure theres a at least semi lighted flat feild somewhere for night play (the presumed most acceptable time). Now of course, this would cut into drinking, but Im not advocating abandoning our normal play. Im merely advocating that we actually put words into action, and expand. The details can be worked out and worried about later, what really needs to happen is dedication to pull this off. Dedication my friends, is what has kept us playing for over a year.

Start seeing who would play, hopefully we will be surprized at the number of people ready to do something different on their free time.