In any club sport, there’s nothing better for getting the old competitive juices going than playing against rival clubs, and croquet is certainly no exception. Indeed ‘aiming to make the team’ to play against the other five clubs on the Sunshine Coast, is often one of the stated motivations of those new members who come to join our Noosa Croquet Club.
Until a few years ago however, the route to achieve this goal, was not as easy as it might have sounded. On the Coast, there have long been opportunities for experienced players at two different levels of handicap skills, to play in inter-club Pennant and Shield competitions. What was needed, was a competition between clubs for players who are new to the game, who would naturally have high initial handicaps. In conversations back in 2018, prior to the COVID 19 arrival up here, the respective Presidents of the Nambour and Noosa croquet clubs, Pat Habner and Niven Gugich respectively, created an annual two-match home/away competition for the less experienced players of their two clubs. Just a week or so ago, the Noosa Club won back the Habner/Gugich Shield from their friendly rivals down the road who had been victorious the previous year. The yearly results now stand at 3 to Noosa and 2 to Nambour.
Such has been the success of this initiative, that a new division, the Plate, has now been added to the inter-club competitions across all six clubs of the region. Noosa is fielding teams at all three divisional levels in 2024. Go Noosa!
